Examine the journals of our zealous missionaries, I will not say among
the Hottentots or Esquimaux, but in the highly _civilized_, though
fearfully _uncultivated_, inhabitants of ancient India. How often, and
how feelingly, do they describe the difficulty of rendering the
simplest chain of thought intelligible to the ordinary natives, the
rapid exhaustion of their whole power of attention, and with what
distressful effort it is exerted while it lasts! Yet it is among these
that the hideous practices of self-torture chiefly prevail. O, if
folly were no _easier_ than wisdom, it being often so very much more
_grievous_, how certainly might these unhappy slaves of superstition
be converted to Christianity! But, alas! to swing by hooks passed
through the back, or to walk in shoes with nails of iron pointed
upwards through the soles--all this is so much less _difficult_,
demands so much less exertion of the will than to _reflect_, and by
reflection to gain knowledge and tranquillity!