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Untitled Article
more and more confirmed ; and as the teachers were , and still are , in most cases the only teachers of morality , the helief became universal , and has kept its ground to the present day . God is indeed acknowledged to be the supreme moral legislator , but it is not inquired whether his commandments are given to us through the statutary law of the church , or in a very different way . *'— " The religion of Christ contains not only the purest , but also the
briefest morality . It is that of nature ; it accords with the dictates of our hearts , and lays upon us no yoke of doubftul tests . The commandment of Christian morality is the simple expression of the voice of virtue within us . No mystic discipline , no wonderful expedients , through which secret effects will be accomplished . It delineates no entire system of moral instruction ; it delivers no complete code of moral duties ; but it commands love , the love of goodness . Thou shalt do good , not for the sake of reward or praise , but
from love to virtue . This is the universal commandment , that of the virtuous purpose , rising out of the pure heart , and this comprehends within it every particular case of duty . Let every man know of himself what is right . Let every man use his best moral judgment , and act upon it , that his deeds may proceed from a pure motive , and obey the commandment of a pure heart . But how did Christianity teach this virtue of a holy self-determination ? It taught it not as a revelation from heaven , but as a revelation of the
human heart ; and to prepare itself a way it stept forward to men become obtuse in merely formal practices , and awakened their power of attention to the voice of virtue within them , that they might be fitted to receive the divine revelation : * Repent ye , for the kingdom of heaven is at hand . ' * Religion , as a teacher of morality , places itself upon the ground of human conscience , professes to teach nothing new , nothing unascertained before , nothing of which man can be put in possession only through a higher
revelation . But it calls upon barbarous and unthinking man to hear and acknowledge the voice of his own heart . Christianity delivers no system of moral duties , but it teaches moral purity . It founds not a new moral code , but a new moral condition . The commandment to be pure in heart expresses no particular law ; it respects only the virtuous determination , when man submits himself to the laws of virtue , and the purpose is virtuous even when the law is mistaken . The will , considered not so properly a power in man ,
as the man himself determining his own actions , the use of his own powers , lays a ground on which human virtue can be built . His moral strength is measured by the intensity with which he determines his powers on the side of virtue . ' " * — " What is that within our breasts through which we are more than a mere mirror of the material world without us , more than mere autom atons , led by blind impulses , the source of joy and sorrow , of love and
hatred , of admiration and enthusiasm ? What is this logos of the life of man , which breathes a soul into action , which gives sanctity to law , and carries a high and spiritual feeling even into inanimate nature ? It is the consciousness of our own nature , of our capacity and destination . It is that ^ ooral feeling which is not to be defined , explained , and brought under a formula , which is only to be quickened and invigorated . Here the
under-• The divines and moralists of Germany , without denying the antecedent eer ta \ nty of human actions , consider the freedom of the will as the proper element ot all moral ageucy . They say that a moral world can no moie be conceived to exist without it , than the natural world without time and space ; that the determinations of a moral agent do not fall within the laws under which we conceive of the determinations of physical forces . Leibnitz , Hemsterhuis , and Kant , three great names , ttuccessivcly threw the weight of their conviction and authority ou this side .
Untitled Article
270 Letters from Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 270, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/54/
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