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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.
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Untitled Article
ence , ) can be looked at . Let the word be what it may , so it be but spoken with a truthful intent , this one thing must be interesting in it , that it has been spoken by man—that it is the authentic record of something which has actually been thought or felt by a human being . Let that be sure , and even though in every other sense the word be false , there is a truth , in it greater than that which it affects to communicate : we learn from it to
know one human soul . * Man is infinitely precious to man , not only because where sympathy is not , what we term to live is but to get through life , but because in all of us , except here and there a star-like , self-poised nature , which seems to have attained without a struggle the heights to which others must clamber in some
travail and distress , the beginning of all nobleness and strength is the faith that such nobleness and such strength have existed and do exist in others , how few soever and how scattered . A book tvhich gives evidence of any rare kind of moral qualities in its author is a treasure to which all the contents of aTL other books
are as dross . What is there in the writings even of Plato or of Milton so eternally valuable to us as the assurance they give that a Plato and a Milton have been ? been in this very world of ours , where , therefore , we also , according to the measure of our opportunities , may , if we will , be the like . The gospel itself is not more a gospel ( si / ayyeX / ov ) by the doctrines it teaches , than be * - cause it is the record of the life of Christ .
It is one of the evils of modern periodical writings , that we rarely learn from them to know their author . In those sibylline leaves wherein men scatter abroad their thoughts , or what seem their thoughts , we have little means of identifying the productions
of the same sibyl ; and no one particular oracle affords by itself sufficient materials for judging whether the prophet be a real
soothsayer . It is so easy in a single article to pass off adopted ideas and feelings for the genuine produce of the writer ' s mind ; it is so difficult on one trial to detect him who , aiming only at the plausible , finds and converts to that meaner purpose the same arguments which occur to him who is earnestly seeking for the true . Would but every person who writes anonymously adopt , like Junius Redivivus , a uniform signature , whereby all the
emanations of one individual mind might have their common origin attested , great would be the advantage to upright and truthful writing , and great the increase of difficulties to imposture in all its kinds and degrees . A periodical writer would then have a character to lose or to gain ; the unfairness , or ignorance , err
presumption which he might manifest in one production , would have their due influence in diminishing the credit of another ; a comparison between different writings of the same author would disclose whether his opinions varied according to the point he had to carry , or wavered from thte absence /> f eny fixed principles of judgment , A man who pretends to the intellect or th * virtoe
Untitled Article
Writing * of J % criiu 9 Rediviv u * . 263
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 263, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/47/
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