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beauty ; but an impression exerts its influences immediately or not at alL When , for intellectual purposes , the memory recalls facts , their , intrinsic value may remain the same , however frequently they may be placed before the mind ; but when for spiritual purposes 9 the effect is different . Impressions become weaker , and their influences more and more impaired o £
perverted the more frequently they are acted upon by memoiy . Though , m their own nature , they are , like all moral influences , imperishable , they are peculiarly susceptible of corruption and perversion ; and it is far better that they should subsist ( though individually lost to consciousness ) as wholesome elements of our moral being , than that they should pass tinder a change which is injurious to them , and can answer no good purpose
whatever . The great object of earthly discipline being to invigorate the spiritual nature , it is clear that whatever causes useless exhilaration on the one hand , or depression on the other , ought to be avoided . The habit of dwelling on the past does both . It needs not a moment ' s consideration to perceive that the contemplation of past achievements , ( as achievements , and not for the sake of their results , ) must occasion an elation of heart ill becoming those
who are only entering" upon the path of spiritual life . It is as if the infant should gloTy in having put his foot to the ground , and sit down , to congra * tulate himself on the feat , when perhaps his destiny may hereafter call him to traverse the globe . While we employ the memory in presenting arid embellishing our own good deeds , we are indulging in the most degrading kind of spiritual voluptuousness , and insulting Him who bestowed our faculties for higher purposes .
Many who agree with us , as to the folly and danger of this species of spiritual intoxication , advocate an extreme quite as pernicious , though , as it is less alluring , it is less common . They would depress and debilitate the soul by the indulgence of remorse . Confounding remorse and repentance—things as different in their nature as Memory and Hope—they impose on themselves , and enjoin on others , the injurious penance of recording past sins and reviving past sorrows , which , having yielded their results , are fit only to be forgotten . They flagellate and macerate their souls as monks of old did their bodies ; and the punishment has the analogous effect of weakening the powers which need in vigoration , and of superinducing disease to which the penitent is not constitutionally liable . If our meaning be here mistaken , if we be supposed to countenance levity and carelessness in spiritual concerns , or any contempt of the discipline of life , the misapprehension must arise from the error we are endeavouring to exposes
Remorse , by which we understand the bitter feeling arising from the belief that in a situation precisely the same we might have acfed differently , cannot be rationally indulged by those who maintain that all the circumstances of their external and internal life are foreseen and ordained by God . The sorrow , shame , and fear , which are the elements of repentance , have no necessary connexion with Remorse , which is altogether a fallacious feeling , and like all other fallacies , hurtful to those who entertain it . In its
operation it is wholly retrospective , and in its influence as debilitating ; as it is agonizing . It resembles the malignant tortures of the tyrant , and not the salutary and tender inflictions of the physician . Of the emotions which combine to form repentance , shame is retrospective , sorrow relates « to the present , and fear is prospective . United , they produce a change of mind from vice to virtue , making use of the past only as subsidiary to the future . Thus and thus only should the past be used . Our contemplation should be
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Essay on the proper Use of * the Retrospective Faculty * 617
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VOL . IV . 2 X
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 617, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/33/
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