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dence of God , as healthy stimulants to a puier and more vigorous course of action . These results being obtained , these influences being realized , " the things which were behind" were consigned to oblivion . The habit of dwelling on the past , has a narrowing as well as a debilitating influence . Behind us , there is a small , — -an almost insignificant measure of time ; before us , there is an eternity . It is the natural tendency of
the mind to magnify the one , and to diminish the other ; for the one we have measured , step by step ; the other is so foreshortened by the situation from which we view it , that we are unable to measure it . However steadily the reason may set about instituting the comparison , the imagination is first baffled by the infinite inequality , and then , turning for relief to the familiar space already traversed , is easily led to estimate its comparative by its positive magnitude . So false an estimate must impair both the rectitude and
speed of our career . What chance has the helmsman of steering his course aright , if he contemplates only the shore he has left , the breakers he has traversed , and the clouds which have blown over ? To the ocean before him he may discern no limits , and there may be no familiar object on the horizon which can help him to measure the intervening space ; but he knows that something more than a waste of waters is before him ; and-if he
be wise , he will strive to reach it by the shortest' and safest track . With a similar intentness should we look into futurity with a perpetual reference of our observations to our present guidance . The conflicts of our youth were of an ignobler kind than those we shall henceforward have to sustain ; our temptations meaner , our errors grosser , our fears more abject , our guilt more debasing ; the contemplation of them can therefore only tend to contract the mind and vitiate the moral taste .
It may be asked , how , if all this be true ,, we are to render the duty of instructing others compatible with our own spiritual improvement ? We answer , that while engaged in such a task there is a perpetual reference of our own experience to the interests of others , which deprives the act of retrospection of all its injurious influences . In such a case , we are instituting vigorous , present action , and not lost in an enervating reverie on the past . We are actuated by an invigorating impulse , instead of sinking under a selfish temptation .
It may further be asked , whether in heaven there will be this forgetfulness of the things that are behind , —whether , among the secrets of the heart which shall there be revealed , there will not be a display of all the fostering and ripening influences which have nourished the soul to maturity ? There probably will be such a display ; according to our conceptions , there
must be such an one exhibited to the intimate consciousness of every individual ; but in a manner widely different from any which can take place here . Here we are apt to conceive external things as of a substantial ,, their influences as of a shadowy , nature . There we shall apprehend exactly the reverse . All things of which we here take cognizance are but attributes and manifestations of an essence which now eludes our search , but which we
shall hereafter recognize as a manifest existence . These external things will then have passed away as shadows , and will be immortalized in their influences . These influences , of which so many are here misapprehended through the imperfection of our faculties , or forgotten from their multitude , or unnoticed from their subtlety , will there be presented in completeness of number and proportion , as an epitome of the life which has been passed * They will not be summoned by memory , but recognized by consciousness . They will not pass before the mind in procession , like ghosts clad in earthly
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Essay on the proper Use of the Retrospective Faculty . 619
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 619, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/35/
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