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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
commission appointed , which should be handsomely remunerated , to see that no alteration was made ; that what was tottering should not be removed or propped , that what was vacant should not be supplied , that what was roofless should not be covered with a slate or tile , that what was unfit for the habitation and use of man should undergo no innovating change . However these commissioners might be enamoured of antiquity , and disposed to eulogize the stately relics of former times , the man who was condemned to use them as a home would pine for comforts and bewail a lot which excluded him from the advantages
that almost all his countrymen enjoyed in their unpretending but convenient abodes . Religion is the home , the tower , the refuge of the human soul . Man is a wanderer , an exile , an outcast from his native soil , till he finds himself settled within its sacred precincts . Unchanging like its great Author , it is the same in every age . It is made for man , and it fits man for heaven . It lingers on the earth while there is a soul to be saved , a lost and wandering sinner to be reclaimed , or a care-worn pilgrim to be guided to his
everlasting home ; but it descended from heaven , and to its natal soil it constantly aspires , and thither in the consummation of all things it will ascend to Him from whom in mercy it came forth . While religion itself is one , entirely unique , altogether
unchangeable and not to be improved , the means of spreading , teaching , and confirming it , are or should be various as the minds and conditions of those beings who are to be made subject to its influence . What will in this respect suit one age , will be totally unfit for another . What will move the barbarian , will excite the smile or
the contempt of the philosopher . What will benefit the child , will not touch the man . Make any form of religious worship , let it be as well adapted as human ingenuity can shape it , to this century ; the human mind must stagnate , or that form must become obsolete in the next . And any form devised before the
light of science rose , before the metaphysics of mind were explored , before liberty walked our streets and dwelt in our cottages , can no more be adapted for the present day to excite true devotion , to feed holy purpose , to aid our heaven-ward march , than the gothic relics of that ignorant and leisure age can be fit for the present habitation and accommodation of mankind .
And yet how strong is the propensity in the human mind to confound the means with the end to look upon the instruments &s if they were the work , to regard accidental forms as essences , to tremble when any one sets fire to * the wood , hay , and stubble / and to raise the outcry that the edifice which is erected upon a rock , and built of massy living stones , will be burnt down . When the Scottish nation rose en masse against the errors and corruptions of the Roman Catholic church , they , strong-minded mtDj untampering souls , threw the miaeai and the breviary into
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298 The Liturgy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 298, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/10/
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