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Untitled Article
Some hypotheses which are presented as the close of his speculation , aTe yet more inadmissible , and need only to be mentioned to be rejected : I refer to the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity from a speculation on the mode of divine conception , which , in Lessing ' s opinion , might originate a duplication of deity . How a triplication is possible we are not informed ;
probably by a duplication of the duplicate * I also refer to the hypothesis that each individual of mankind must go through the whole process to which the race is destined—not at once , but by successive appearances in the world —by a transmigration of the soul . Whence these notions were obtained , it is needless to inquire , for it is certain that they were not derived from either of the repositories of truth to which we have access , reason or revelation . My recapitulation will again be chiefly in the words of Lessing .
The Christian doctrine and moral law are to be inferred from facts , and not learned from explicit declarations . This method affords a proof that the development of reason is the object of revelation . The doctrine of a future life of retribution could not have been learned with certainty from the natural course of events . As to other doctrines , " mere rational truths may be and have been long taught as immediate truths of revelation , in order to spread them more rapidly and establish them more firmly . "
" Let us examine whether these intermingled doctrines were not a new impulse for the reason of mankind . " After these truths of reason have been embodied in revelation , " they must become truths of reason before the race can be benefited by them . At the time they were revealed , they were , to the recipients , no truths of reason ; but they were revealed in order that they might become so .
" For more than eighteen hundred years the Scriptures have employed the understandings of men more than all other books , and more than all other books enlightened them , were it only by the light which the human understanding put into these books . " It is impossible that any other book could have been so generally known among such various people ; and that such different modes of thinking should be busied over this same book , has indefinitely advanced the human understanding .
" The understanding absolutely requires to be exercised on spiritual objects , in order to attain its full clearness , and bring forth that purity of the heart which makes us capable of loving virtue for its own sake . " Education has its final end with the species not less than with the individual . What art succeeds in effecting with the individual , shall not nature effect with the whole >
" The period of completion will assuredly come , in which man , however his understanding feels convinced of a continually better futurity , will still not be necessitated to draw motives of conduct from this futurity : when he will do good because it is good ; not because arbitrary rewards are set on it , which were formerly employed to strengthen his volatile sight for the recognition of internal and better rewards . " D . F .
Untitled Article
The Education of the Human Race . 517
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1830, page 517, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2587/page/13/
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