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Untitled Article
anity meets our wants . Mental liberty is a universal want of our common nature . It is as essential to the existence and heal h of rational creatures as light to vision , as air to respiration , as the sun , the rains , and the dew , to
vegetation . Without it we pine and linger and die . Without it we may retain the life of brutes—we lose the life of man . The faculties which are at once the characteristic and the glory of our nature , would either lie inert or destroy themselves by useless struggles against their fetters . Thank God , tinder the gentle sway of Christianity each one may think and determine for himself , sitting under his own vine and his own fig-tree , no one daring to make him afraid I Had the Christian religion , indeed , enunciated , as some think it did , certain propositions which contradicted the first principles of reason , small , if any , would have been the benefit conferred thereby on the
world . A relief in some of its uncertainties might have been given to the mind ; but a relief which was shackled with the condition of believing what experience controverted , would have been purchased at a dear rate . Nay , it would have gone far to undermine all certainty , to impeach all evidence , to subvert , not to establish , truth . For , if experience , if the clearest decisions of the judgment , were in any case controverted—if , in direct opposition to them , certain tenets were to be believed and professed , what warrant could there be that they were in any instance to be trusted ? Wrong in some , they might be wrong in all cases . Still further , a religion which
controverts any of the clear decisions of the mind , subverts the only foundation on which it can itself stand . It destroys our confidence in the decisions of reason , and thereby removes the means of conviction . In opposing the decisions of our judgment , it is guilty of an act of suicide . It removes the only channel by which itself can gain access to the human mind . Such a system , wherever found , is a curse , not a blessing . It is not the parent of conviction , and certainty and satisfaction , but of doubt , scepticism , sus picion , and perplexity . Such a system is not fitted to the human mind . It does not meet its wants except in a hostile array . It docs not encourage its action , but proclaims the futility of reflection and research . All under its influence would be vanity and vexation of spirit , for the mind could gain satisfaction in none of its inquiries , its conclusions would ever be open to impeachment , its labour would be spent for that which could not satisfy , and in consequence would soon cease to be given . If mystery had been a prominent feature in the Christian faith , its acceptableness would have been much
diminished . Of mystery enough was already in existence before the promulgation of Christianity . It was not an increase of mystery , it was not a change of one mystery for another , that was needed , but of certainty for uncertainty , of truth for doubt , of light for darkness . And this is what was given . No mysteries are there in the New Testament but such as are made known . On many points darkness was allowed to remain , but where do light was given , no credence was required . Of the points on which darkness is found to exist , many are such as could not from their nature be
revealed to man ; others , if illuminated , would have little or no bearing on the great interests of the present state ; and others remain in partial obscurity to excite our diligence and thus to improve our faculties . Dilticulties there are in the religion of Jesus . But they affect not the leading features of the system . And a religion without difficulties would prove a dubious good . Religion is an intellectual blessing , we must remember , inasmuch as it developes the faculties . Its great business in its intellectual bearings is to call out and foster our native powers , to form individual minds—minds capable of thinking , judging , and deciding each for itself . If so , difficulties axe
Untitled Article
Christianity an Intellectual Good . 441
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 441, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/9/
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