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embellish me fits there is a solid structure of truth and piety . These disconrses must have been peculiarly effective in the delivery , for we know none which more powerfully suggest the manner and even the voice of the preacher . The suggestion seems so like an act of memory , that it is scarcely possible to
believe that the voice of the preacher was silent in death before his appeals reached our land . This affords a proof of the fitness of these sermons for being read as well as heard . As an illustration , take the following extract from a discourse on Providence .
" To shew you how little our lot in the world has been in our own hands , it is not necessary to carry you back to those hours when you were waiting for Jife , and the little spark of existence , just kindled , was trembling under every passing breath of casualty . It is not necessary to dwell upon the days of your infancy , when it was every minute
doubtful whether the being that had been introduced into life would live long enough to understand that he had a life to preserve . We will pass over those days of boyhood when the understanding is not ripe enough to form plans , and when the forethought , just appearing , extends no further than to the pleasures , hardly to the evils , of the morrow . We will pass
over too the remaining years of minority , when the imagination just begins to know its own alacrity , and , fertile in youthful projects , leaps forward from one year to another of a life , long in prospect , touching every object it meets with the tints of hope . The whole of this early period , though it often gives a lasting colour to the remainder of life , is
so little withiu our own power , and is so seldom influenced by any plans which we are then capable of forming , that it would be superfluous to insist longer upon the conclusion we would draw from it . There is a time , however , when every man begins to feel something of his own self-sufliciency , when we choose the pursuits we mean to follow , mark
out what we imagine to be the road to happiness , and thus prepared , enter on the wide and busy scene of active life From this period , then , when you think you have taken the thread of your fortunes into your own hands , allow me to follow you a few steps . The first fact which shews us how little our present situation is the result of our own
arrangements , is the innumerable defeats every man ' s plaus encounter . 1 appeal to any one who has Lived long in the world , whether , at any period of his life .
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he has found himself in the precise circumstances he expected . 'This certainty of disappointment arises from more than one source . In the first place , so various and complicated are human interests , so inordinate are many of our desires , and so unreasonable are others , that two individuals can hardly form extensive plans of conduct which shall not interfere , if not by direct collision , at least in sdAne subordinate parts , so as to affect the issue of the whole . What a
range of disappointment does this single fact open ! The success of one half the human race is the partial disappointment of the other . From this single source of disappointment , however real or imaginary—the contrariety of human interests—you see how much of your destiny on earth is placed at once out of your own controul . It would be
impossible to enumerate all the causes of the failure of our plans . One , however , which more perhaps than any other shews the folly of far-extended projects , is the uncertainty of health , a blessing which is attended with no perceptible sensation of pleasure , but which is indispensable to the full enjoyment of every other pleasure . And is this a good which is within the reach of human
foresight ? 1 ask you , young man , who have been forming extensive plans of future eminence , you who are so busy while the worm of disease is secretly feeding at the seat of life , aud sucking the bloom of health from your cheek , f ask you , laborious man of business , whose plans have attained all the excellence which maturity of mind , long
experience , and increasing confidence , can give them , have you never felt pains which warn you of your mortality ? Have you never laid your head upon the pillow with a forebodiug that to-morrow might sweep you and your projects into oblivion ? What then ? Is man the arbiter of his own fate , when the least mite that floats in God ' s air may derange
the whole system of the human constitution ? Is man the being to forget that his lot is not within his own disposal , wheu the first breeze may waft pestilence to his heart , and the first exhalation which rises up under his nostrils may poison the source of his being ; and , if
he recover , leave him a life of debility , of inactivity , perhaps of pain and misery ? Go to the tomb-stones , and read there the record of human disappointments . The heads which are now mouldering in those narrow cells once teemed with plans as probable as yours . " — Pp . 18—21 .
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278 Critical Notices . — Theologieal .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 278, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/62/
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