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strength of the hope , a larger scope will be gradually afforded for the exercise of both , and the happiness to which they are designed to minister will be perpetually on the increase . There is no comparison between the pleasure arising from the gratification of young and undisciplined desires and of those which are chastened by wisdom . There is likewise no comparison between the impetuous , ill-sustained activity of the soul in youth , and its
equable and vigorous exercise in a healthy maturity . The two kinds of gratification are also as different in nature as in degree . The greatest positive pleasure which life affords is in a sense of development ; and this is enjoyed to its utmost extent when the spiritual capacities , formed from strong intellectual faculties , are perpetually exalted and enlarged ; when hope comprehends views of increasing sublimity and beauty , and prompts to the grandest achievements of which a growing nature is capable .
This sense of development , though not immediately occasioned by the prospective faculty , could not exist without its agency . It springs immediately from the expansion of the principles of action ; and that expansion corresponds with increased vigour of action ; and that increased vigour of action is caused by the elevation of the hope . For this expansion of principles , provision is made in the revelation which is our guide and teacher ,
and in the nature which God has given us . It is sanctioned by the testimony of him who knew what was in man , and by the experience of life . Yet is such a development practically , if not speculatively , disallowed by many who know not the evil consequences of contracting and corrupting the influences of religious hope . Such persons ( Christians perhaps , though unenlightened ) provide themselves and would fain furnish others with a set of principles ( which they believe to be set forth by the Scriptures ) for the
guidance of the heart and life . These principles they believe to be divine and perfect , unsusceptible of change , and incapable of improvement . They set out safely on their spiritual course , and , as long as they make progress , all is well . But there is in all immortal things a tendency to growth and increase ; and the mind becomes capable of higher desires and achievements than the principles on which it has acted can originate , unless they also are allowed to expand with the growth of the mind . But here the
prejudice intervenes , against which we protest . Because the principles are rightly believed to be divine in their origin and immortal in their nature , they are wrongly supposed to be already perfect in their development , and immutable in their form . It would be as reasonable to argue that the principle of filial fear , by which the young child is properly actuated , should continue to be his guiding principle through life , as that the motives which
influence the infant Christian should serve the same purpose when his spiritual capabilities become apostolic . The consequences , not alas 1 imaginary , of this fatal mistake are , that the growth of the soul is stunted , the range of the faculties is contracted , and hope , whose divine office it is to present objects of nobler attainment , being baffled in every attempt to lead upward and onward , sinks dispirited and feeble .
The truth is , and we have gospel authority for our conviction , that all influences must be modified to suit the changes of the thing influenced . There were divine and eternal principles involved in the institutions of Judaism ; yet those institutions have long been outgrown . There are divine and eternal principles involved in the theism of many savage nations , in the first religious notions of a child , in the various forms of civil government , and in the obscure dawn of every science . Yet all these things are destined to overthrow or decay . The principles , being divine and imperishable , re-
Untitled Article
Essay on the proper Use of the Prospective Faculty . 671
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1830, page 671, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2589/page/15/
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