Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of LiverpoolMartineau, James
Religion
Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool
Martineau, James
Unitarianism
him to do, was himself glorified by God; taken to that Heaven which is
the home of goodness;—thus showing the issues to which God conducts the
tried and perfected spirit, that His Faithfulness is bound up with the
destinies of those that trust Him, and that His providence is the
recompense of the just, who live now by Faith.
Now the first thing that will strike you in comparing these two possible
methods of a Revelation is, that the written communication containing
doctrines is cold, formal, indistinct and distant, when contrasted with
the living presence of a pure and heavenly being, who places himself at
our side, enters into our joys and sorrows, shows us in action and in
suffering the will of God reflected on every form of life, and works out
before our eyes the vast idea of perfection. No message, no written
document, no form of words, could leave such distinct impressions or
quicken such sympathy and love, as the warm and breathing spirit who
entered into communication with us, whose influences we felt upon our
trembling souls, whose eye penetrated and whose voice melted us, and who
took us by the hand and showed us how children of God should prove their
filial claim, and through the vicissitudes of a Father’s providence pass
meekly to their Home.
Such a living Revelation could of course be preserved for _posterity_
only through the medium of written records, but then these records would
be chiefly descriptive; and their grand purpose would be faithfully to
convey to the men of other times the true image of that heavenly being;
to re-create him, from age to age, in the heart of life; to introduce
the Son of God with the power of reality into the business and the
bosoms of men; to impress upon the silent page such graphic characters
that they give off to the mind animated scenes, and bring the living
Christ before the gazing eye; and the written Revelation would perfectly
fulfil its mission, when by vivid and faithful narrative, without
comment or reflection of its own, it had placed us in the presence of
Jesus, and left us, like the disciples of old, to collect our
impressions of the Christ as we waited upon his steps, and watched the
spirit working into life, and caught the tones of living emotion; when
we walked with him through the villages of Galilee, and saw him arrest
the mourners, and touch the bier, and restore the only son of the
widowed mother; when we retired with him to the lone mountain, and
witnessed how the spirit ascended to God before it entered into the
conflicts of temptation; when we stood with him in the Temple Court, and
beheld how much more noble than the Temple is the Spirit that sanctifies
the Temple, and how the Priest in his strong hold quailed and trembled
under the thrilling tones and simple majesty of Truth; when we followed
him to his home, not neglecting to observe how his eye, that was never
cold to goodness, fell upon the widow and her mite as he left the
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