On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
Cdurte , is it the warmth of throned patronage which tempts ite powers into life , or every minion of royalty might be a Horace of a Southey . No mind can possess real power which does not impress you with the conviction that , wherever planted , it would have found for itself a greatness ; and the office of circumstances
is but to trace the track of its energies . When the stream , born among the hills , tumbles its waters into the valley 5 it has its first channel determined by the mountain surface , turned aside by pinnacles of rock , and invited by the yielding alluvial soil ; but its ceaseless chafing loosens and rolls away the rugged masses that break its current , and makes for it a new and a freer way .
And minds which are to fertilize the world , may have the windings of their genius traced by influences frotn without ; but the same mighty will by which they first burst forth to precipitate themselves on the World below , will undermine the most frowning barriers of circumstances , and carve out fresh courses for their power . ThoughDr . Priestley would not have been unknown to the world
had he , in conformity with an intention once entertained , been doomed to a counting-house in Lisbon , it is not difficult to discern several groups of events which exercised a deep and lasting influence upon his character , and determined the relation in which he should stand to society . The first of these is to be found in his early religious education , which was conducted on the old
puritanical model of constraint and rigour . There is little doubt that he is right in ascribing to this cause the deep sense of religion which he maintained through life . His was not one of those minds which are necessarily devotional , —which , under all conceivable adjustments of circumstances , betray their affinity with Heaven—whose religious sympathies , instead of being suppressed
by neglect or overborne by the tide of adverse influence , would , like air entangled in the ocean-depths , rise the more buoyantly to their native element . Such a mind was Heber ' s , of which you can no more think as without piety , than you can of colour without extension . Deprive it of this central attribute * and there
remains an impossible combination of qualities ; but Dr . Priestley ' s other qualities might have existed independently of his devotion , without any violation of the order of nature . In the language of logicians , it was his property , not his essential difference . And , accordingly , we believe that , for its full and permanent
development * a systematic and stimulant discipline was needed ; and this was abundantly administered in the coarse excitement and Sabbatarian severity of a Calvinistic education . His acknowledgment of the miseries accompanying its benefits is remarkable among the confessions of orthodoxy : —
• The weakness of my constitution , which often led me to think thai I should not be long-lived , contributed lo give my mind a still more serious turn ; and having read many books of experiences , and , in consequence , believing that a new birth , produced by the imme-
Untitled Article
* 8 On the Life , Character , and Works vfDr . Priestley .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 22, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/22/
-