Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
"The weak and ignorant are peculiarly liable to be infected with
these doctrines, and to them they are peculiarly hurtful. Unable
to take a just view of their particular duties, or of the uses
and purposes of our natural faculties, creatures of impulse,
slaves of circumstances, the pleasures of this hour fill them
with vanity, the devotion of the next with enthusiasm, or perhaps
terror. Charmed by worldly follies because they are ignorant or
idle, and without resistance to vice because they have never
learned self-command, they seek to extirpate all the natural
emotions and desires which they do not know how to regulate, and
so give up the world. But they deceive themselves; their moral
defects are not lessened; they have only changed their objects.
The frivolity which formerly made trifles absorb them, now spends
itself on religion, which it degrades. Whatever the former
defects of their character, whether selfishness, vanity, pride,
ill-temper, indolence, or any other, it remains unconquered,
though the manner in which it exhibits itself is different. In
one respect they are much worse; formerly they were less blind to
their own imperfections; they sometimes suspected they were
wrong; now they are quite satisfied they are right; nor can they
easily be undeceived, because, when about to examine their hearts
and their conduct, the error in their views directs their efforts
to a false standard."
We think we cannot more appropriately close the faint outline, in which
we have endeavoured, however feebly, to shadow forth the merit of these
volumes, than by placing before our readers the tribute to departed
excellence, which this touching and finished picture is intended to
convey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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