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servers of the scheme of Providence ; and to carry it further than philosophy sanctions , is only to impair our recognition of Providence . The man to whom , in a barbarous age , it is given to know that which he has not the means of ascertaining for himself , is an inspired man , and consequently a
special messenger of God . The man who in an advanced state of civilization and ~ science knows the same truth by the means which society affords , is not an inspired man , nor is he set apart from his fellow-men by a peculiar commission . In both cases the knowledge and the power are the same : the difference lies in their origin and application to man , and not in their own nature or m the sight of God . r
There is this unity in the providence of God towards the human race , however different have been its manifestations towards the Jews and the Gentiles . The lapse of time has discovered this to us . It has discovered to us that it was for the sake of the whole race that the Jewish nation was led on by a special process to a lofty eminence of religious attainment . We see that white preparations were going on with extraordinary rapidity
in the land of promise , there were stirrings from time to time in the mass of the unregenerate nations , whose causes and aims now appear analogous with each other , and with those by which the chosen people was wrought upon . Wise men rose up here and there in Heathen lands who discerned and taught something more than was generally known of the frame of the universe , or of the purposes of life , or of the nature and character of Him
who gave it ; and thus carried on the multitades to successive degrees of fitness for the reception of the brighter and more abundant truth which was at length to be generally embraced . These men , whether they were Grecian moralists , or Persian astronomers , or Egyptian metaphysicians , were raised up by Providence as directly as the prophets of Israel . The mission of the latter was identical with the rest in its origin and analogous in its end , though incalculably loftier in its manifest character and more awful
in its sanctions . Socrates , the wisest of the Gentiles , was therefore , in as far as he taught truth , a fellow-servant with the Jewish teachers before God ; their fellowlabourer in pioneering the way for the gospel ; their brother in the truth of God , though appointed an abode in the outer courts of his Father ' s house .
In the contemplation of his character atid services , doubts have frequently arisen as to whether his was * a special commission , as to whether his attainments were no more than correspondent with his natural means , —as to whether , in short , he was inspired . We know too little of what those natural means were to be able to decide ; and to this may be added , that it is difficult to ascertain also what his attainments Were . It will be long :
before men cease to speculate on * the extent of his wisddm , the means by which he attained it , and the principles by which- those parts of his conduct were guided , which were either uncommon in themselves , or rendered dubious by what we know of his doctrines .
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The Religion of Socrates . 579
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 579, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/3/
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