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
view , so as to become familiar with the spirit of the time ; needed equally by the theologian , that he may live in thought through the sacred days of old , and become pilgrim in heart to the holy land ; that he may not only kndw how many stamens there are in the lilies of the field , and how many feet in the cedar ' s height *
but see how they grace the plains of Jericho , or wave upon the top of Lebanon ; not only count the steps of the temple and tell the manufacture of the priest ' s robe , but gaze on the majestic pile from the Mount of Olives , or stand in the resplendence ot its golden gate , and hear the murmur of the prayers , and watch the incense curling to the skies ; not merely discourse on the
properties of hyssop , and conjecture of what timber the cross was made , but mingle with the weeping daughters of Jerusalem , and raise a reverential eye towards the crucified , and listen to that fainting cry of filial tenderness . Now , both in his history and in his theology , Dr . Priestley ' s deficiency of conception is rnuch felt . In the former there is not , as far as we remember , a single delineation
of character , a scene or a cluster of incidents as a whole , and consequently not any picture that leaves a strong impression upon the reader ' s mind 3 they are accounts , not of persons but of actions , not of eras but of events ; the trains of contemporary events in different localities are placed before us like a number of parallel lines , with no attempt to twine them together ; and each course
of successive events like so many points , not melted into a continuous line . The nature of ecclesiastical history itself offers , it is true , a great obstacle to the preservation of unity ; it is in its very essence a dislocation ; a number of events which form no proper class in themselves ; apart arbitrarily cut out from the
whole , comprising effects removed frojn their causes , and causes left alone by their effects ; and , independently of this difficulty , the materials of ecclesiastical history are unpromising enough . Yet there are portions containing elements for strong impression ; there are persecutions , and councils , and crusades ; there are the broad contrasts of an idolatrous civilization and a barbarous
Christianity , of the genius of Rome and the spirit of Christ , of the religion of the East and the philosophy of the West ; there are the matchless heroes of conscience in the Alpine fastnesses and intrepid reformers of the cities of Germany ; and there is no reason whv the power of these passages should be abandoned to
the province of fiction . The want of picturesque effect in Dr . Priestley ' s narratives involves in a great degree a loss of moral effect ; by giving a ground plan of a persecution , and an enumeration of all the horrors it contained , he produces rather a disgust at the butchery than enthusiasm at the magnanimity with which it is said to have been met . The merit of his histories is to be sought , not in the narrative of incidents , but in their exposure of opinions ; not in the facts , but in the inferences ; not in the deli-
Untitled Article
On the Life , Character , and Writing * of Dr . Priestley . 61 *
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 87*, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/19/
-