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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
"fried on the results of circumstances Tather than on the circumstances themselves : i . e * on , the present in preference to the past * Having found that in tettain situations of temptation we have fallen , our proper use of our experience will be in avoiding such situations if we can , or in strengthening the principles which may uphold us ; and not in mourning because , being placed as we were , with infirm principles , we did not act , as it was impossible we should have acted .
The Scriptures are our warrant for thus using our experience . They exhort sinners to sin no more ; they supply support to virtuous principles and incentives to holy feelings . They appeal to our experience of the misery of vice , and they also reproach the sinner . But nowhere do they blame any one for not having acted differently , his principles and habits remaining the same . They denounce his principles , they reprobate his habits , and all their exhortations tend , not to unavailing lamentation over the past , but to newness of life . It seems strange that while we advise one who has sustained a misfortune to turn his attention from it in search of a
remedy , and one who has committed an error to repair and forget it , we should prescribe a different course for the guilty . We bid him be sorrowful , not that his motives are corrupt and his habits depraved , not that he is too weak to resist the impulse of his passions , but that all this being the case , his conduct is not upright , pure , and moderate . On the same principle we should lament , not that some of our brethren are poor , and miserable , and blind , and naked ; but that , being so , they are starved , and shivering , and in darkness . If they really feel sorrow and shame for their
condition and fear of its consequences , the best , the only account to which they can turn these painful emotions is as incentives to improve their state . As deep a feeling of shame as is consistent with a due independence of other men ' s opinions , as large a measure of sorrow as can consist with a sensibility to surrounding blessings , as awful an emotion of fear as is compatible with filial trust , are the proper constituents of repentance ; but they should be used as prompting to present action , and tending to future good ; and , therefore , as entirely disconnected with remorse .
It is universally allowed that means are valuable only as instrumental to an end , and that they should , therefore , be discarded when the end is obtained . If this maxim were acted on as generally as it is admitted , earth would become almost a heaven . We should have no misers , no profligates , no tyrants , no slaves ; few , very few sufferers by what are called natural evils , and , what is more to our purpose , no . self-tormentors . Guilt and sorrow having wrought their work of regeneration , would cease to be painful in
the retrospect , if not forgotten . Of such a state of things we have at present no prospect in this world ; but the nearer we can approach to it , the better for ourselves and others . The sooner we can get rid of the swathing bands of infancy , the more rapid will be our growth to maturity . The sooner we can with safety drop the outward forms which are but adventitious helps to essential things , the sooner we can rise above the external bondage and internal conflicts which beset and waylay and hinder the immortal spirit
in its pilgrimage , the greater will be our vigour and fitness when entering on a better state of being . This was Paul ' s conviction when he described himself as forgetting the things which were behind , as well as pressing forwards to those which were before . He had , like other men been guilty of faults and follies ; but how did he revert to them ? Wot with any wish or imagination that they could be undone , or that they might have been avoided ; but as warnings to himself and others ; as testimonies of the moral provi-
Untitled Article
618 E $$ ay en the proper Use of the Retrospective Faculty .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 618, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/34/
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