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and interest : I see enough of the spiritual nature revealed to give confidence to benevolent effort ; and enough of mystery remaining to excite to further research . I see here and there a bright , alluring example of the blessedness of philanthropy , at which men gaze and pass on . I hear an universal acknowledgment of the obligation to do good to the souls as well
as the bodies of men : and yet , what comes of it ? Some are too indolent to give , others too proud to receive instruction . Some are too selfish to inquire , others too timid to reveal . Men meet to worship God , and separate without trying to do his work upon each other . They pronounce that to his own master each stands or falls , and then have recourse to public or private persecution for opinion . They thank God for the honour of being his vicegerents , and then compose themselves to sleep at their posts . "
" Nay , nay friend : few , I hope , are so impious . " " Few or none are wholly selfish , I trust : but very few are happy in an apostolic philanthropy . " " How eminent must those few have appeared to you , when you mingled once more among men , like a visitant from , another world 1 " " They appeared like beings of a privileged race . When I see a physician ministering to the soul as tenderly as to the body of his patient , when I see a preacher of the gospel discoursing more eloquently by his life than his
lips , when I see a student gathering together the treasures of wisdom only to distribute them with increase , or a friend faithfully administering reproof ; when I hear the highest wisdom conveyed in lowly words , and stupendous truths let down into the mind of a little child—1 rejoice to see how the will of God is done on earth as in heaven . * ' We also witness efforts to redeem nations from slavery , and millions 11
from superstition . " And in such efforts we recognize yet more eminently the spirit of the great charter of our spiritual freedom . But here the beauty oi the work is too often impaired by the intervention of a narrowness of spirit totally inconsistent with the principle of the undertaking . No voice which preaches the gospel to the heathen should be silenced because it cannot pronounce the Shibboleth of human imposition : nor should that gospel be called impure which is held out by ready hands , though the washing , according to the pharisaical rites of ablution , should have been omitted . *'
" Your years of solitude have done much for you , my friend . What will be the result of the experience of the next nine years spent in society ?" " If I can obtain as distinct an apprehension of some other truth of equal importance , " replied Helmer , " I shall not think that ray time has been lost , or my experience wasted . " In nine years , Helmer was no more . The advocates of freedom in the senate were lamenting the loss of a strenuous defender of the national honour . The University prized the record of his name . His funeral hymn was chaunted on the banks of the Ganges , and the West Indian slave dropped a burning tear to bis memory . The mirth of playful children was checked when they heard that their benefactor would smile upon them no more . The devotions of his household were now conducted b y a voice which faultered at the words , " I am distressed for thee , my brother . " In the house of prayer , his place remained vacant ; and the pastor who had also been his friend , mourned that he roust now turn to the records of
memory for an illustration of the power of a sound mind tempered by love out of a pure heart .
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Solitude and Society : a Tule . 449
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VOL . IV . Z K
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1830, page 449, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2586/page/17/
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