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Untitled Article
above it . It does this indeed ; but it does a great deal more . We have aspirings after the infinite in power and knowledge ( which is power ) ; but we have a nobler and holier instinct towards moral beauty and perfection . The mind has a thirst for the infinite * which corresponds to it ; but there are deeper and purer yearnings implanted in the heart and soul . Who is not conscious to himself , that he has within him an abstract idea of perfection , which colours all he loves with its own rich overrunnings , and which hides , as it were , in the cloud of its glory , much or most of that on which he would dislike to dwell ? Poetry , in a general view is eminently qualified to refine and to elevate this ideal standard of perfection ; to keep alive in the heart and soul the sympathy with excellence and the passion for the beauty of holiness . It is well known ( and we wish that we had the "lofty passage of Channing at hand , in which he cites the fact and comments upon it ) , that our own Uranian Blind Man ,, the sweet singer of Eden * was excited to the love and pursuit of virtue by perusing books of romance and chivalry . Instead of becoming a dreamer or a Quixote by these studies , they sent him forth to be one of the glories of humanity , and , swan like , to sing the songs of heaven
along the stream of a life as pure as his song . Of so much less importance is it , what is read , than in what spirit we come to read it . If , then , romance could thus become the preceptress of virtue , how much more directly must poetry lead to the same end , if it be read in the same or in a similar spirit of self-improvement ! This is what we now wish to enforce upon the young reader .
Poetry may be so studied , that it shall most importantly subserve the purposes of religion , by elevating and fixing the standard of moral excellence , without which nothing great or good will ever be effected . There is no such being as a grovelling poet . Every true poet has that in his writings , which may be employed in the education of the human heart and soul . Without this , no writer
can live . Books of blasphemy and ribaldry appear from time ? to time ; but they are not ' had in everlasting remembrance / Nothing is preserved for the sake of its profaneness or obscenity ? but if anything partaking of such becomes popular and lasting , it id because these qualities are so blended with other and better things ^ that the worm is preserved for the sake of the amber . But , generally speaking , the muses form but an antwchorus to
the virtues , and the echoes of fancy repeat and harmonize the voice of wisdom . But all ( we must again impress it ) depends upon the views which we take of what we are doing . < The pure in heart will see God * in the works of his gifted creatures as well as his own ; and they , on the contrary , who bring a vain or corrupted heart to this or any other branch of study , will not fail to dwell upon the unsightly reptile , where others see but the jnoving gem . It was , we believe , Fletcher of Saltoun who said , Give me
Untitled Article
400 On the Connexion between Poetry and Religion .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 490, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/58/
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