Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions Volume 1, Pt. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ... "religion must have a moral origin, so far at least that the evidence of its doctrines cannot, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly independent of the will: "78 that religion is designed to improve the nature and faculties of man, and that every part of religion is to be judged by its relation to this main end."79 These maxixns he insisted on during his whole course as a religious writer; they plainly had a deep hold on his mind, and were uttered by him, not with the lip only, as if learned from others, but as if they had indeed been drawn from " the fountain-head of genuine self-research." If he then tried a religious creed " with reference to logical and technical precision, and not in respect to its moral rests in the Moral Being of Man. cli 7' See the Quarterly Review for December, 1841, pp. 11-12. The passage is from Mr. Gladstone's " Church Principles considered in their results," 1: . 68. 78 Bing. Literaria, vol. i. pp. 206-7. 7' Aids to Reflection, p. 138. edit. 5. characteristics and tendencies," how strangely must he have deserted a principle which his own experience had established l--how unaccountably shut his eyes to the light of a " safety lamp, ''30 which his own hands had hung up for the guidance of othersl Let any candid reader consult on this subject the Aids to Rrytection, especially that portion in which the author maintains, that revealed truths are to be judged of by us, as far as they are grounds of practice, or in some way connected with our moral and spiritual interests,"--that " the life, the substance, the hope, the love, in one word, the faith, --these are derivatives from the practical, moral and spiritual...