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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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S % » FiitbU ttkef tht Intiislbfe . 4 £
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* Blessed drg they who have not seen , aad yet have believed . *—& > ha £ * . 29 . These words are and always must be true of the fact respecting which they were first spoken . We that now believe , and they who are to corfce after us , must , while we are here , walk b y faita and not by sight ; but , leaving the immediate question of Christianity for awhile , it is worth reflecting how vast a proportion of our noblest things is invisible . When We bring them before us , they seem so far to outweigh all we have seen or can see , that we may as emphatically say of them as did our Saviour of his own uprising from the dead , Blessed are they who have not seen , and yet have believed . '
We need reminding of this certain and remarkable truth , that all our best things are objects of faith , rather than of Bight . It is the character of our age to be proud of its spirit of investigation , and to submit all it can , and more than it ought , to the cognizance of the senses . We need , occasionally , to ask the question of ourselves , what is the extent of the field which physical experience and the investigations of the senses , can of themselves open before us ? By our senses we perceive colours , and forms , and some of their properties—their hardness and softness .
their cold or heat , moisture or dryness , smells or tastes ; we experience the pleasant or the disagreeable sensations they impart { pur own wants we perceive , our pleasures and our pains ; beyond this we * have not seen . We assist our sensations by the power of induction ; immediately the field is widened—detached phenomena are arranged in their right order , more properties of objects are made kuovyn , and the laws of nature are in part revealed . We learn to
anticipate , in some degree to dispose , events—we distinguish- —we increase our pleasures , and lessen our pains . The outward world , jand trie station in that world appointed for us to occupy , become familiar to us ; by analogy we learn thfe rriost certain of all facts —that death will one day level us , as it levels all beside , with the dusU
And this is the range of things ' visible ;* and even here we have included much which is underived from sense—much to which sense alone could never guide us . There are the ideas of space and time , and cause and effect ; who has ever beheld > or will behold them ? Yfet they interpret the elements , and classify the phenomena of nature ; through them our sensed speak intelligibly , and experience gives her lessons . How far are We now from having arrived at the end of our endowments ? Might we not almost say that everything is to come ? All that dignifies and ennobles human nature , all that makes us men , is
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It Is fcFifce free frdm forlnidity , and frdtn that disregard to early association ^ , Which deals out Uiioneas tired invectives agfcih&t out * tvard observances , ]
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 43, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/43/
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