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ferent characters as Mrs . Barbauld ' s and Dr . Priestley ' s ; and in the essay on devotional taste by the former , contrasted with the strictures on it by the latter , we have a picture of the piety of the
exclusively poetical , placed side by side with that of the exclusively philosophical . Every religious mind feels its religion to be the loftiest object of its regard , to lie at the very summit of its
powers ; and in the effort to reach the infinite and eternal , in yearning to shadow forth the idea of unlimited perfection , naturally seeks for its faith an alliance with all that appears most interesting and glorious . Mrs . Barbauld ' s passion was for the beautiful and the sublime ; and to her , devotion was poetry , akin to the aspirations of genius : Dr . Priestley knew nothing so noble as truth ; and to him devotion was philosophy gazing calmly at the only object above itself . Mrs . Barbauld saw in all creeds some elements of
adoration for the heart , and dreaded lest controversy should brush off the emotions they awakened ; Dr . Priestley saw in all creeds much error , and hoped that controversy would render them more quickening , by making them more pure . Mrs . Barbauld understood the natural language of art , felt the deep expressiveness of whatever
is beautiful in form and sound , and would have given to piety the majesty of architecture , and the voice of music ; Dr . Priestley thought that the eye and the ear with their physical gratifications , were only in the way in the work of realizing great general truth , and would have worshipped with the simplicity of a spirit in space . Mrs . Barbauld reverenced human affections , even in . their illusions
and extravagances ; she saw in them the passion for excellence , and the propensity to believe in its reality ; she had probably observed the important fact , ( so conspicuous in Doddridge , ) that the tempers which ate most devotional are uniformly the most tender in their human relations ; she could discover no specific difference
between the emotions yielded to ideal excellence on earth , and invisible perfection in heaven ; and she dared to find an analogy between piety and love ; Dr . Priestley , little given to PlatoriLsms of fancy , holding that all feeling should be proportioned to the real qualities of its object , and forgetting that it cannot overpass the
gulf between the created and the Creator , and expand itself to literal infinitude , condemned the expression as false and profane . Perhaps each was right , except in condemning the notions of the other . Happily , religion has its affinities with the whole soul , and there is no faculty incapable of worship . One mind is affected by conceptions of immeasurable space and time , another by ideas
oflife and change ; one prefers the blank , great truth , another the single and moving instance ; one to go forth and seek the object of its adoration in fields beyond the solar light , another to bring his image home , and feel him in the closet or in the mind : one , when standing before the invisible , may love to look into the deep back-ground of infinity which lies behind created things ; another , to gaze on the beautiful forms of reality , sketched on its dark sur-
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On the Life , Characier , and Writings of Dr . Priestley . 233
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No . 76 . S
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 233, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/17/
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