Section I.

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An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance

By John Foster.

Revised and Enlarged Edition.

"A Work, which, popular and admired as it confessedly is, has never

met with the thousandth part of the attention which it deserves. It

appears to me that we are now at a crisis in the state of our country,

and of the world, which renders the reasonings and exhortations of

that eloquent production applicable and urgent beyond all power of

mine to express."

Dr. J. Pye Smith.

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If the circumstance of a manner of introduction somewhat different from

what would be expected in a composition of the essay class were worth a

very few words of explanation, it might be mentioned, that the

following production has grown out of the topics of a discourse,

delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid of the British and

Foreign School Society.

When it was thought, a good while after that occasion, that a more

extensive use might be made of some of the observations, the writing was

begun in the form of a Discourse addressed to an assembly, and commencing

with a sentence from the Bible, to serve as a general indication to the

subject. But after some progress had been made, it became evident that

anything like a comprehensive view of that subject would be incompatible

with the proper limits of such a composition.

In relinquishing, however, the form of a public address, the writer

thought he might be excused for leaving some traces of that character to

remain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; for

reverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuing

the use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for the modest egotism of

public discoursers.

In the general design and course of observations, the essay retains the

character of the original discourse, which was, in accordance to the

presumed expectations of a grave assembly, an attempt to display the

importance of the education of the people in reference, mainly, to moral

and religious interests. There are special relations in which their

ignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of the

community. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to the

legislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general and

moral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause of

their vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject is

attempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be illustrated in the

following pages.

Nor was it within the writer's design to suggest any particular plans,

regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system of

operations hopefully begun, for raising these classes from their

degradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation of

the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravated

national guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the same

condition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this,

occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who are

hostile to the mental improvement of the people. If any one should say

that this is a mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility is now

gone by, he may be assured there are many persons, of no insignificant

rank in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at the

simplicity with which he can so easily shape men's opinions and

dispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must have been the

most charitable or the most obtuse of observers.

It is feared the readers of the following essay will find some defect of

distribution and arrangement. To the candor of those who are practised in

literary work it would be an admissible plea, that when, in a preparation

to meet a particular occasion for which but little time has been allowed,

a series of topics and observations has been hastily sketched out, it is

far from easy to throw them afterwards into a different order. The author

has to bespeak indulgence also, here and there, to something too like

repetition. If he qualifies the terms in which this fault is acknowledged,

it is because he thinks that, though there be a recurrence of

similarities, a mere bare iteration is avoided, by means of a diversity

and addition of the matter of illustration and enforcement.

Any benevolent writer on the subject would wish he could treat it without

such frequent use of the phrases, "lower orders," "subordinate classes,"

"inferior portion of society," and other expressions of the same kind;

because they have an invidious sound, and have indeed very often been used

in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with no such feeling; that

they are employed simply as the most obvious terms of designation; and

that he would like better to employ any less ungracious ones that did not

require an affected circumlocution.

In several parts of the essay, there will be found a language of emphatic

censure on that conduct of states, that predominant spirit and system in

the administration of the affairs of nations, by which the people have

been consigned to such a deplorable condition of intellectual and

consequently moral degradation, while resources approaching to immensity

have been lavished on objects of vanity and ambition. So far from feeling

that such observations can require any apology, the writer thinks it is

high time for all the advocates of intellectual, moral, and religious

improvement, to raise a protesting voice against that policy of the states

denominated Christian, and especially our own, which has, through age

after age, found every conceivable thing necessary to be done, at all

costs and hazards, rather than to enlighten, reform, and refine the

people. He thinks that nothing can more strongly betray a judgment

enslaved, or a time-serving dishonesty, in those who would assume to

dictate to such an advocate and to censure him, than that sort of doctrine

which tells him that it is beside his business, and out of his sphere, as

a Christian moralist, to animadvert on the conduct of national

authorities, when he sees them, during one long period of time after

another, not doing that which is the most important of all things to be

done for the people over whom they preside, but doing what is in substance

and effect the reverse; and doing it on that great scale, which contrasts

so fearfully with the small one, on which the individuals who deplore such

perversion of power are confined to attempt a remedy of the consequences.

This interdiction comes with its worst appearance when it is put forth in

terms affecting a profound reverence of religion; a reverence which

cannot endure that so holy a thing should be defiled, by being brought in

any contact with such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad

government, on the intellectual and moral state of the people. The

advocate of schemes for the improvement of their rational nature _may_,

it seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on religion, for

enforcing on _individuals_ the duty of promoting such an object. In the

name and authority of religion he may press on their consciences with

respect to the application of their property and influence; and he may

adopt under its sanction a strongly judicial language in censure of their

negligence, their insensibility to their accountableness, and their

lavish expenditures foreign to the most Important uses: in all this he

does well. But the instant he begins to make the like judicial

application of its laws to the public conduct of the governing

authorities, that instant he debases Christianity to politics, most

likely to party-politics; and a pious horror is affected at the

profanation. Christianity is to be honored somewhat after the same manner

as the Lama of Thibet. It is to stay in its temple, to have the

proprieties of homage duly preserved within its precincts, but to be

_exempted_ (in reverence of its sanctity!) from all cognizance of great

public affairs, even in the points where they most interfere with or

involve its interests. It could show, perhaps, in what manner the

administration of those affairs injures these interests; but it would

degrade its sacred character by talking of any such matter. But

Christianity must have leave to decline the sinister compliment of such

pretended anxiety to preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred character,

it can _venture that,_ on the strength of its intrinsic quality and of

its own guardianship, while, regardless of the limits thus attempted in

mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on what

will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what

concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for

operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that

public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the

community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without

violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this

judicial office. And as to its _right_ to do so,--either it has a right

to take cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of

states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it

will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the final

award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure on this

alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been pronounced on the

Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small pretensions both

religious and literary, was the immediate cause that prompted these

observations. But they were made with a general reference to a

hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it

_was_ hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circumstance, that

those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by implicating it

with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one side. Let the

religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as largely as he

pleased with the _proper sort_ of political sentiments, that is, the

servile, and then it was all right.]

It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for

the inferior classes, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham. The

announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was received with hope

and delight by those who had so long deplored the condition of those

classes. But when it was formally set forth, its administrative

organization appeared so defective in liberal comprehension, so

invidiously restricted and accommodated to the prejudices and demands of

one part of the community, that another great division, the one in which

zeal and exertions for the education of the people had been more and

longer conspicuous, was constrained to make an instant and general protest

against it. And at the same time it was understood, that the party in

whose favor it had been so inequitably constructed, were displeased at

even the very small reserve it made from their monopoly of jurisdiction.

It speedily fell to the ground, to the extreme regret of the earnest

friends of popular reformation that a design of so much original promise

should have come to nothing.

All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has

so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far

more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that

time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme

would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, destitute of all that

can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of the

difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if

there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral

principle, enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure.

The longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the

subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand

as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the peril

of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to the

disposition of the most influential classes; but it were little less than

infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding, to

establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; _that_

is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.

As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen elsewhere, it

is hardly possible for a patriot to feel a more bitter mortification than

in reading the description, as recently given by M. Cousin, of the state

of education in the Prussian dominions, and then looking over the hideous

exhibition of ignorance and barbarism in this country; in representing to

himself the vernal intelligence, (as we may rightly name it,) the

information, the sense of decorum, the fitness for rational converse,

which must quite inevitably diffuse a value and grace throughout the

general youthful character under such a discipline, and then changing his

view to what may be seen all over his own country--an incalculable and

ever-increasing tribe of human creatures, growing up in a condition to

show what a wretched and offensive thing is human nature left to itself.

When neither opprobrium, nor prospective policy, nor sense of duty, can

constrain the attention of the officially and virtually ruling part of

society to an important national interest, it is sure to come on them at

last in some more alarming and imperative manifestation. The present and

very recent times have afforded significant indication of what an ignorant

populace are capable of believing, and of being successfully instigated to

perpetrate. It is not to be pretended that such ignorance, and such

liabilities to mischief, exist only in particular spots of the land, as if

the local outbreaks were merely incidental and insulated facts, standing

out of community with anything widely pervading the mass. Within but very

few years of the present date, we have had the spectacle of millions,

literally millions, of the people of England, yielding an absolute

credence to the most monstrous delusions respecting public questions and

measures, imposed on them by dishonest artifice, and what may be called

moral incendiarism; and these delusions of a nature to excite the passions

of the multitude to crime. It is difficult to believe that all this can be

seen without serious apprehension, by those who sustain the primary

responsibility for devising measures to secure the national _safety_,

(that we may take the lowest term of national welfare;) and that they can

be content to rest that security on expedients which, in keeping the

people in order, make them no wiser or better. It would truly be a

glorious change in our history, if we might at length see the national

power wielded by enlightened, virtuous, and energetic spirits, not only to

the bare effect of withstanding disorder and danger, but in a resolute,

invincible determination to redeem us from the national ignominy of

exhibiting to the world, far in the nineteenth century, a rude,

unprincipled, semi-barbarous populace.

Thus far the hopes which had flattered us with such a change, as a

consequence of a political movement so considerable as to be denominated a

revolution, have been grievously disappointed. We must wait, but with

prognostics little encouraging, to see whether a professed concern for

popular education will result in any effective scheme. That profession has

hitherto been followed up with so little appearance of earnest conviction,

or of high and comprehensive purpose, among the majority of the

influential persons who, perhaps for decorum's sake, have made it, as to

leave cause for apprehension that, if any such scheme were to be proposed,

it would be in the first instance very limited in its compass, indecisive

in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of

our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the

people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental

cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the

kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does

the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune,

that the portion of humanity so far below them should be raised to the

highest mental condition compatible with the limitation and duties of

their subordinate allotment.

No doubt, the most genuine zeal for the object would find difficulties in

the way, of a magnitude to require a great and persevering exertion of

power, were they only those opposed by the degraded condition of the

people themselves; by the utter carelessness of one part, and the

intractableness of another. Nor is it to be denied, that the differences

of religious opinion, among the promoters of the design, must create

considerable difficulty as to the mode and extent of religious

instruction, to form a part of a comprehensive system. But we are told,

besides, of we know not what obstruction to be encountered from prejudices

of prescription, privileged and peculiar interests, the jealous pride of

venerable institutions, assumed rights of station and rank, punctilios of

precedence, the tenacity of parties who find their advantage in things as

they are, and so forth; all to be deferentially consulted.

If this mean that the old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still

to be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured

but in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross

ignorance, with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely

retreat, retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and

following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that

their condition and fate shall be mainly left at the discretion of

ignorant and often worthless parents; that there shall be no considerable

positive exaction of local provision for the institution, or of attendance

of those who should be benefited by it; that, in short, there shall not be

a comprehensive application of the national power through its organ, the

government, by authoritative, and, we must say, in some degree coercive

measures, to abate as speedily as possible the national nuisance and

calamity of such a state of the juvenile faculties and habits as we see

glaring around us; and all this because homage is demanded to anticipated

prejudices, selfishness of privilege, venerable institutions, pride of

station, jealousy of the well-endowed, and the like:--if this be what is

meant, we may well ask whether these factitious prerogatives, that would

thus interfere to render feeble, partial, and slow, any projected exertion

to rescue the nation from barbarism, turpitude, and danger, be not

themselves among the most noxious things in the land, and the most

deserving to be extirpated.

How readily will the proudest descend to the plea of impotence when the

exhortation is to something which they care not for or dislike, but to

which, at the same time, it would be disreputable to avow any other than

the most favorable sentiments, to be duly expressed in the form of great

regret that the thing is impracticable. Impracticable--and does the case

come at last to be this, that from one cause and another, from the

arrogance of the high and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of

prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among friends

of a beneficent design and the discountenance of those who are no better

than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every _other_

kind of power, absolutely _cannot_ execute a scheme for rescuing its

people from being what a great Authority on this subject has pronounced

"the worst educated nation in Europe?" Then let it submit, with all its

pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb on the face

of the earth.

* * * * *

With a view to a wider circulation than that which is limited by the price

of the volume published in an expensive form and style of printing, it has

been deemed advisable to publish a cheap edition of the "Essay on Popular

Ignorance." It is not in any degree an abridgment of the preceding

edition; the only omission, of the slightest consequence, being in a few

places where changes have been rendered necessary by the subsequent

conduct of our national authorities, as affecting our speculations and

prospects in relation to general education; while, on the other hand,

there are numerous little additions and corrections, in attempts to bring

out the ideas more fully, or with some little afterthought of

discrimination or exception. In some instances the connection and

dependence of the series of thoughts have been rendered more obvious, and

the sentences reduced to a somewhat more simple and compact construction;

but the principal object in this _final revised_ has been literary

correction, without any material enlargement or change.

It is hoped that this reprint in a popular form may serve the purpose of

contributing something, in co-operation with the present exertions, to

expose, and partially remedy, the lamentable and nationally disgraceful

ignorance to which the people of our country have been so long abandoned.

Contents.

Section I.

Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind.

--Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness.--Ignorance prevalent

among the ancient Jewish people.--Its injurious operation--and

ultimately destructive consequence.--More extended consideration of

ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens.

Section II.

Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to

those of ancient history.--State of the popular mind in Christendom

during the complete reign of Popery.--Supposed reflections of a

Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical

use.--Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the

understandings of the people.--Their barbarous ignorance even in the

time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories

of this country in that period.--Sunk in ignorance still in what has

often been called our Augustan age.--Strange insensibility of the

cultivated part of the nation with regard to the mental and moral

condition of the rest.--Almost heathen ignorance of religion at the time

when Whitefield and Wesley began to excite the attention of the

multitude to that subject.--Signs and means of a change for the better

in recent times.

Section III.

Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the

popular character.--Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general

and comprehensive purpose to be pursued--Gratification of the senses

the chief good.--Cruelty a subsidiary resource.--Disposition to cruelty

displayed and confirmed by common practices.--Confirmed especially by

the manner of slaughtering animals destined for food.--Displayed in the

abuse of the laboring animals.--General characteristic of the people an

indistinct and faint sense of right and wrong.--Various

exemplifications.--Dishonor to our country that the people should have

remained in such a condition.--Effects of their ignorance as appearing

in several parts of the economy of life; in their ordinary occupations;

in their manner of spending their leisure time, including the Sunday; in

the state of domestic society; consequences of this last as seen in the

old age of parents.--The lower classes placed by their want of education

out of amicable communication with the higher.--Unhappy and dangerous

consequences of this.--Great decline of the respect which in former

times the people felt toward the higher classes and the existing order

of the community.--Progress of a contrary spirit.

Section IV.

Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence among

the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented

with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward

their superiors; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the

wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and

innovators.--Observations in answer.--Special and striking absurdity

of this objection in one important particular.--Evidence from matter of

fact that the improvement of the popular understanding has not the

tendency alleged.--The special regard meant to be had to _religious_

instruction in the education desired for the lower classes, a security

against their increased knowledge being perverted into an excitement to

insubordination and disorder.--Absurdity of the notion that an improved

education of the common people ought to consist of instruction

specifically and almost solely religious.--The diminutive quantity of

religious as well as other knowledge to which the people would be

limited by some zealous advocates of order and subordination utterly

inadequate to secure those objects.--But, question what is to be

understood by order and subordination.--Increased knowledge and sense

in the people certainly not favorable to a credulous confidence and a

passive, unconditional submission, on their part, toward the presiding

classes in the community.--Advantage, to a wise and upright government,

of having intelligent subjects.--Great effect which a general

improvement among the people would necessarily have on the manner of

their being governed.--The people arrived, in this age, at a state

which renders it impracticable to preserve national tranquillity

without improving their minds and making some concession to their

claims.--Folly and probable calamity of an obstinate resolution to

maintain subordination in the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and

despotic manner of former times.--Facility and certain success of a

better system.

Section V.

Extreme poverty of religious knowledge among the uneducated people:

their notions respecting God, Providence, Jesus Christ, the invisible

world.--Fatal effect of their want of mental discipline as causing an

inaptitude to receive religious information.--Exemplifications,--in a

supposed experiment of religious instruction in a friendly visit to a

numerous uneducated family; in the stupidity and thoughtlessness often

betrayed in attendance on public religious services; in the

impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of

clearness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern

by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes

retained in the near approach to death.--Rare instances of the

admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties,

even in the old age of an ignorant man.--Excuses for the intellectual

inaptitude and perversion of uncultivated religious

minds.--Animadversions on religious teachers.

Section VI.

Supposed method of verifying the preceding representation of the

ignorance of the people.--Renewed expressions of wonder and

mortification that this should be the true description of the English

nation.--Prodigious exertions of this nation for the accomplishment of

objects foreign to the improvement of the people.--Effects which might

have resulted from far less exertion and resources applied to that

object.--The contrast between what has been done, and what might have

been done by the exertion of the national strength, exposed in a series

of parallel representations.--Total unconcern, till a recent period, of

the generality of persons in the higher classes respecting the mental

state of the populace.--Indications of an important change in the manner

of estimating them.--Measures attempted and projected for their

improvement.--Some of these measures and methods insignificant in the

esteem of projectors of merely political schemes for the amendment of

the popular condition.--But questions to those projectors on the

efficacy of such schemes.--Most desirable, nevertheless, that the

political systems and the governing powers of states _could_ be

converted to promote so grand a purpose.--But expostulations addressed

to those who, desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object

itself.--Incitement to individual exertion.--Reference to the sublimest

Example.--Imputation of extravagant hope.--Repelled; first, by a full

acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of

improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the

essential constitution of our nature; and next, by a plain statement, in

a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to

expect from a general extension of good education.--Answer to the

question, whether it be presumed that any merely human discipline can

reduce its subjects under the predominance of religion.--Answer to the

inquiry, what is the extent of the knowledge of which it is desired to

put the common people in possession.--Observations on supposed degrees

of possible advancement of the knowledge and welfare of the community;

with reflections of astonishment and regret at the actual state of

ignorance, degradation, and wretchedness, after so many thousand years

have passed away.--Congratulatory notice of those worthy individuals who

have been rescued from the consequences of a neglected education by

their own resolute mental exertions.

Essay on Popular Ignorance.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

_Hosea_.

Section I.

It may excite in us some sense of wonder, and perhaps of self-reproach, to

reflect with what a stillness and indifference of the mind we can hear and

repeat sentences asserting facts which are awful calamities. And this

indifference is more than the accidental and transient state, which might

prevail at seasons of peculiar heaviness or languor. The self-inspector

will often be compelled to acknowledge it as a symptom and exemplification

of the _habit_ of his mind, that ideas of extensive misery and

destruction, though expressed in the plainest, strongest language, seem to

come with but a faint glimmer on his apprehension, and die away without

awakening one emotion of that sensibility which so many comparatively

trifling causes can bring into exercise.

Will the hearers of the sentence just now repeated from the sacred book,

give a moment's attention to the effect it has on them? We might suppose

them accosted with the question, Would you find it difficult to say what

idea, or whether anything distinct enough to deserve the name of an idea,

has been impressed by the sound of words bearing so melancholy a

significance? And would you have to confess, that they excite no interest

which would not instantly give place to that of the smallest of your own

concerns, occurring to your thoughts; or would not leave free the tendency

to wander loose among casual fancies; or would not yield to feelings of

the ludicrous, at the sight of any whimsical incident? It would not

probably be unfair to suspect such faintness of apprehension, and such

unfixedness and indifference of thought, in the majority of any large

number of persons, though drawn together ostensibly to attend to matters

of gravest concern. And perhaps many of the most serious of them would

acknowledge it requires great and repeated efforts, to bring themselves to

such a contemplative realization of an important subject, that it shall

lay hold on the affections, though it should press on them, as in the

present instance, with facts and reflections of a nature the most strongly

appealing to a mournful sensibility.

That the "people are destroyed," is perceived to have the sound of a

lamentable declaration. But its import loses all force of significance in

falling on a state of feeling which, if resolvable into distinct

sentiments, would be expressed to some such effect as this:--that the

people's destruction, in whatever sense of the word, is, doubtless, a

deplorable thing, but quite a customary and ordinary matter, the

prevailing fact, indeed, in the general state of this world; that, in

truth, it would seem as if they were made but to be destroyed, for that

they have constantly been, in all imaginable ways, the subjects of

destruction; that, subjected in common with all living corporeal beings to

the doom of death, and to a fearful diversity of causes tending to inflict

it, they have also appeared, through their long sad history, consigned to

a spiritual and moral destruction, if that term be applicable to a

condition the reverse of wisdom, goodness, and happiness; that, in short,

such a sentence as that cited from the prophet, is too merely an

expression of what has been always and over the whole world self-evident,

to excite any particular attention or emotion.

Thus the destruction, in every sense of the word, of human creatures, is

so constantly obvious, as mingled and spread throughout the whole system,

that the mind has been insensibly wrought to that protective obtuseness

which (like the thickness of the natural clothing of animals in rigorous

climates) we acquire in defence of our own ease, against the aggrievance

of things which inevitably continue in our presence. An instinctive policy

to avoid feeling with respect to this prevailing destruction, has so

effectually taught us how to maintain the exemption, by all the requisite

sleights of overlooking, diverting, forgetting, and admitting deceptive

maxims of palliation, that the art or habit is become almost mechanical.

When fully matured, it appears like a wonderful adventitious faculty--a

power of evading the sight, of _not seeing_, what is obviously and

glaringly presented to view on all sides. There is, indeed, a dim general

recognition that such things are; the hearing of a bold denial of their

existence, would give an instant sense of absurdity, which would provoke a

pointed attention to them, the more perfectly to verify their reality; and

the perception how real and dreadful they are, might continue distinct as

long as we were in the spirit of contradicting and exploding that absurd

denial; but, in the ordinary state of feeling, the mind preserves an easy

dulness of apprehension toward the melancholy vision, and sees it as if it

saw it not.

This fortified insensibility may, indeed, be sometimes broken in upon with

violence, by the sudden occurrence of some particular instance of human

destruction, in either import of the word, some example of peculiar

aggravation, or happening under extraordinary and striking circumstances,

or very near us in place or interest. An emotion is excited of pity, or

terror, or horror; so strong, that if the person so affected has been

habitually thoughtless, and has no wish to be otherwise, he fears he shall

never recover his state of careless ease; or, if of a more serious

disposition, thinks it impossible he can ever cease to feel an awful and

salutary effect. This more serious person perhaps also thinks it must be

inevitable that henceforward his feelings will be more alive to the

miseries of mankind. But how obstinate is an inveterate habitual state of

the mind against any single impressions made in contravention to it! Both

the thoughtless and the more reflective man may probably find, that a

comparatively short lapse of time suffices, to relieve them from anything

more than slight momentary reminiscences of what had struck them with such

painful force, and to restore, in regard to the general view of the

acknowledged misery of the human race, nearly the accustomed tranquillity.

The course of feeling resembles a listless stream of water, which, after

being dashed into commotion, by a massive substance flung into it, or by

its precipitation at a rapid, relapses, in the progress of a few fathoms

and a few moments, into its former sluggishness of current.

But is it well that this should be the state of feeling, in the immediate

presence of the spectacle exhibiting the people under a process of being

destroyed? There must be a great and criminal perversion from what our

nature ought to be, in a tranquillity to which it makes no material

difference whether they be destroyed or saved; a tranquillity which would

hardly, perhaps, have been awaked to an effort of intercession at the

portentous sign of destruction revealed to the sight of Ornan; or which

might at the deluge have permitted the privileged patriarch to sink in a

soft slumber, at the moment when the ark was felt to be moving from its

ground. If the original rectitude of that nature had been retained by any

individual, he would be confounded to conceive how creatures having their

lot cast in one place, so near together, so much alike, and under such a

complication of connections and dependences, can yet really be so

insulated, as that some of them may behold, with immovable composure,

innumerable companies of the rest in such a condition, that it had been

better for them not to have existed.

To such a condition a vast multitude have been consigned by "the lack of

knowledge." And we have to appeal concerning them to whatever there is of

benevolence and conscience, in those who deem themselves happy instances

of exemption from this deplorable consignment; and are conscious that

their state of inestimable privilege is the result, under the blessing of

heaven, of the reception of information, of truth, into their minds.

If it were suggested to the well instructed in our companies to take an

account of the benefit they have received through the medium of knowledge,

they would say they do not know where to begin the long enumeration, or

how to bring into one estimate so ample a diversity of good. It might be

something like trying to specify, in brief terms, what a highly improved

portion of the ground, in a tract rude and sterile if left to itself, has

received from cultivation; an attempt which would carry back the

imagination through a progression of states and appearances, in which the

now fertile spots, and picture-like scenes, and commodious passes, and

pleasant habitations, may or must have existed in the advance from the

original rudeness. The estimate of what has ultimately been effected,

rises at each stage in this retrospect of the progress, in which so many

valuable changes and additions still require to be followed by something

more, to complete the scheme of improvement. In thus tracing backward the

condition of a now fair and productive place of human dwelling and

subsistence, it may easily be recollected, what a vast number of the

earth's inhabitants there are whose places of dwelling are in all those

states of worse cultivation and commodiousness, and what multitudes

leading a miserable and precarious life amidst the inhospitableness of the

waste, howling wilderness. Each presented circumstance of fertility or

shelter, salubrity or beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a much

greater number of the occupants of the world, than those to whom the

"lines are fallen in such pleasant places."

When, in like manner, a person richly possessed of the benefits imparted

by means of knowledge, finds, in attempting to recount them, that they

rise so fast on his view, in their variety, combinations, and gradations

from less to greater, as to overpower his computing faculty, he may be

reminded that this account of his wealth is, in truth, that of many other

men's poverty. And if, while these benefits are coming so numerously in

his sight, like an irregular crowd of loaded fruit-trees, one partially

seen behind the offered luxury of another, and others still descried,

through intervals, in the distance, he can imagine them all devastated and

swept away from him, leaving him in a scene of mental desolation,--and if

he shall then consider that nearly such is the state of the great

multitude,--he will surely feel that a deep compassion is due to so

depressed a condition of existence. And how strongly is its infelicity

shown by the very circumstance, that a being who is himself but very

imperfectly enlightened, and who is exposed to sorrow and doomed to death,

is nevertheless in a state to be able to look down upon the victims of the

"lack of knowledge" with profound commiseration. The degree of pity is the

measure of a conscious superiority.

We may say to persons so favored,--If knowledge has been made the cause

that you are, beyond all comparison, better qualified to make the short

sojourn on this earth to the greatest advantage, think what a fatal thing

that must be which condemns so many, whose lot is contemporary and in

vicinity with yours to pass through the most precious possibilities of

good unprofited, and at last to look back on life as a lost adventure. If

through knowledge you have been introduced into a new and superior world

of ideas and realities, and your intellectual being has there been brought

into exercise among the highest interests, and into communication with the

noblest objects, think of that condition of the soul to which this better

economy has no existence. If knowledge rendered efficacious has become, in

your minds, the light and joy of the Christian faith and hope, look at the

state of those, whose minds have never been cultivated to an ability to

entertain the principles of religious truth, even as mere intellectual

notions. You would not for the wealth of an empire consent to descend,

were it possible, from the comparative elevation to which you have been

raised by means of knowledge, into melancholy region of spirits abandoned

to ignorance.

But in this situation have the mass of the people been, from the time of

the prophet whose words we have cited, down to this hour.

The prophets had their exalted privilege of dwelling amidst the

illuminations of heaven effectually countervailed, as to any elation of

feeling it might have imparted, by the grief of beholding the daily

spectacle of the grossest manifestations and mischiefs of ignorance among

the people, for the very purpose of whose exemption from that ignorance it

was that they bore the sacred office. One of the most striking of the

characteristics by which their writings so forcibly seize the imagination

is, a strange continual fluctuation and strife of lustre and gloom,

produced by the intermingling and contrast of the emanations from the

Spirit of infinite wisdom, with those proceeding from the dark, debased

souls of the people. We are tempted to pronounce that nation not only the

most perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid of all human tribes.

The revealed law of God in the midst of them; the prophets and other

organs of oracular communication; religious ordinances and emblems; facts,

made and expressly intended to embody truths, in long and various series;

the whole system of their superhuman government, constituted as a

school--all these were ineffectual to create so much just thought in their

minds, as to save them from the vainest and the vilest delusions and

superstitions.

But, indeed, this very circumstance, that knowledge shone on them from Him

who knows all things, may in part account for an intellectual perverseness

that appears so peculiar and marvellous. The nature of man is in such a

moral condition, that anything is the less acceptable for coming directly

from God; it being quite consistent, that the state of mind which is

declared to be "enmity against him," should have a dislike to his coming

so near, as to impart his communications by his immediate act, bearing on

them the fresh and sacred impression of his hand. The supplies for man's

temporal being are conveyed to him through an extended medium, through a

long process of nature and art, which seems to place the great First Cause

at a commodious distance; and those gifts are, on that account, more

welcome, on the whole, than if they were sent as the manna to the

Israelites. The manna itself might not have been so soon loathed, had it

been produced in what we call the regular course of nature. And with

respect to the intellectual communications which were given to constitute

the light of knowledge in their souls, there can, on the same principle,

be no doubt that the people would more willingly have opened their minds

to receive them and exercise the thinking faculties on them, if they could

have appeared as something originating in human wisdom, or at least as

something which, though primarily from a divine origin, had been long

surrendered by the Revealer, to maintain itself in the world by the

authority of reason only, like the doctrines worked out from mere human

speculation. But truth that was declared to them, and inculcated on them,

through a continual immediate manifestation of the Sovereign Intelligence,

had a glow of Divinity (if we may so express it) that was unspeakably

offensive to their minds, which therefore receded with instinctive recoil,

They were averse to look toward that which they could not see without

seeing God; and thus they were hardened in ignorance, through a reaction

of human depravity against the too luminous approach of the Divine

presence to give them wisdom.

But in whatever degree the case might be thus, as to the cause, the fact

is evident, that the Jewish people were not more remarkable for their

pre-eminence in privilege, than for their grossness of mental vision under

a dispensation specially and miraculously constituted and administered to

enlighten them. The sacred history of which they are the subject, exhibits

every mode in which the intelligent faculties may evade or frustrate the

truth presented to them; every way in which the decided preference for

darkness may avail to defy what might have been presumed to be

irresistible irradiations; every perversity of will which renders men as

accountable and criminal for being ignorant as for acting against

knowledge; and every form of practical mischief in which the natural

tendency of ignorance, especially wilful ignorance, is shown. A great part

of what the devout teachers of that people had to address to them,

wherever they appeared among them, was in reproach of their ignorance, and

in order, if possible, to dispel it. And were we to indulge our fancy in

picturing the forms and circumstances in which it was encountered by those

teachers, we might be sure of not erring much by figuring situations very

similar to what might occur in much later and nearer states of society. If

we should imagine one of these good and wise instructors going into a

promiscuous company of the people, and asking them, with a view at once to

see into their minds and inform them, say, ten plain questions, relative

to matters somewhat above the ordinary secular concerns of life, but

essential for them to understand, it would be a quite probable supposition

that he did not obtain from the whole company rational answers to more

than three, or two, or even one, of those questions; notwithstanding that

every one of them might be designedly so framed, as to admit of an easy

reply from the most prominent of the dictates of the "law and the

prophets," and from the right application of the memorable facts in the

national history of the Jews. In his earlier experiments he might be

supposed very reluctant to admit the fact, that so many of his countrymen,

in one spot, could have been so faithfully maintaining the ascendency of

darkness in their spirits, while surrounded by divine manifestations of

truth. He might be willing to suspect he had not been happy in the form of

words in which his queries had been conveyed. But it may be believed that

all his changes and adaptations of expression, to elicit from the contents

of his auditors' understandings something fairly answering to his

questions, might but complete the proof that the thing sought was not

there. And while he might be looking from one to another, with regret not

unmingled with indignation at an ignorance at once so unhappy and so

criminal, they probably might little care, excepting some slight feeling

of mortified pride, that they were thus proved to be nearly pagans in

knowledge within the immediate hearing of the oracles of God.

Or we may represent to ourselves this benevolent promoter of improvement

endeavoring to instruct such a company, not in the way of interrogation,

but in the ordinary manner of discourse, and _assuming_ that they actually

had in their minds those principles, those points of knowledge, which

would, on the former supposition of a course of questions, have qualified

them to make the proper replies. It may indeed be too much to imagine a

discerning man to entertain such a presumption; but supposing he did, and

proceeded upon it, you can well conceive what reception the reasonings,

advices, or reproofs, would find among the hearers, according to their

respective temperaments. Some would be content with knowing nothing at all

about the matter, which they would perhaps say, might be, for aught they

knew, something very wise; and, according to their greater or less degree

of patience and sense of decorum, would wait in quiet and perhaps sleepy

dulness for the end of the irksome lecture, or escape from it by a stolen

retreat, or a bold-faced exit. To others it would all seem ridiculous

absurdity, and they would readily laugh if any one would begin. A few,

possessed of some natural shrewdness, would set themselves to catch at

something for exception, with unadroit aim, but with good will for cavil.

While perhaps one or two, of better disposition, imperfectly descrying at

moments something true and important in what was said, and convinced of

the friendly intention of the speaker, might feel a transient regret for

what they would with honest shame call the stupidity of their own minds,

accompanied with some resentment against those to whose neglect it was

greatly attributable. The instructor also, as the signs grew evident to

him of the frustration of his efforts upon the invincible grossness of the

subjects before him, would become animated with indignation at the

incompetence or wicked neglect in the system and office of public

instruction, of which the intellectual condition of such a company of

persons might be taken as a proof and consequence. And in fact there is no

class more conspicuous in reprobation, in the solemn invectives of the

prophets, than those whose special and neglected duty it was to instruct

the Jewish people.

Now if such were the state of their intelligence, how would this friend of

truth and the people find, how would he have _expected_ to find, their

piety, their morals, and their happiness affected by such destitution of

knowledge? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? We are

supposing them to be in ignorance of four parts out of five, or perhaps of

nine parts out of ten, of what the Supreme Wisdom was maintaining an

extraordinary dispensation to declare to them. Why to declare, but because

each particular in this divine promulgation was pointed to some

circumstance, some propensity, some temptation, in their nature and

condition, and was exactly fitted to be there applied as a rectifier and

guard? The revelations and signs from heaven were the sum of what the

Perfect Intelligence judged indispensable to be sent forth from him to his

subjects, as seen by him liable to be wrong; and could there be one

dictate or fact superfluous in such a communication? If not, consider the

case of minds in which one, and a second, and the far greater number, of

the points of information thus demonstrated to be necessary, had no place

to shine or exist; of which minds, therefore, the estimates, passions,

volitions, principles of action with the actions also, were in so many

instances abandoned to take their chance for good or evil. But _had_ they

any chance for good in such an abandonment? What principle in their nature

was to determine them to good, with an impulse that rendered needless the

rational discrimination of it by the light of truth? It were an

exceedingly probable thing truly, that some happy instinct, or some

guiding star of good fortune, should have beguiled into an unknowing

choice of what is right, that very nature which knowledge itself,

including a recognition of the will of God, is so often insufficient to

constrain to such a choice.

But further; the absence of knowledge is sure to be something more and

worse than simple ignorance. Even were that absence but a mere negation, a

vacancy of truth, (the terms truth and knowledge may be used for our

present purpose as nearly synonymous, for what is not truth is not

knowledge,) it would be by its effect as a _deficiency_, incalculably

injurious. But it could not remain a mere deficiency: the vacancy of truth

would commonly be found replenished with positive error. Not indeed

replenished, (we are speaking of uncultivated persons,) with a

comprehensive and arranged set of false notions; for there would not be

thinking enough to form opinions in any sufficient number to be distinctly

and specifically the opposites to the many truths that were absent; but a

few false notions, such as could hardly fail to take the place of absent

truth in the ignorant mind, however crude they might be, and however

deficient for constituting a full system of error, would be sure to dilate

themselves so as to have an operation at all the points where truth was

wanting. It is frightful to see what a space in an ignorant mind one false

notion can occupy, working nearly the same effect in many distinct

particulars, as if there had been so many distinct wrong principles, each

producing specifically its own bad effect. So that in that mind a few

false notions, and those the ones most likely to establish themselves

there, shall be virtually equivalent to a whole scheme of errors standing

formally in place of so many truths of which they are the reverse. And

thus the dark void of ignorance, instead of remaining a mere negation,

becomes filled with agents of perversion and destruction; as sometimes the

gloomy apartments of a deserted mansion have become a den of robbers and

murderers.

Such a friend of the people, then, as we were supposing to expend his life

and zeal on the object of rescuing them from their ignorance, would see in

that ignorance not only the privation of all direction and impulsion to

good, but a great positive force of determination toward evil.

But it may be alleged, that he would not find them _wholly_ destitute of

right information. True; but he would find that the small portion of

knowledge which an ignorant people did really possess, could be of little

avail. It is not only that, from the narrowness of its scope, knowledge so

scanty as to afford no principles directly adapted for application to a

vast number of matters of judgment and conduct, would of course be of

small use, though it _were_ efficient as far as it reached--of small use

though it _did_ produce that very limited quantity of good which ought to

be its proper share, in a due proportion to the larger amount of good to

be produced by a larger knowledge. This is not the whole of the

misfortune; it would not produce that proportionate share. For the fewer

are the points to which there is knowledge that can be applied, the less

availing is its application even to those few points. It shall be the kind

of knowledge apposite to them, and yet be nearly useless; from the obvious

cause, that a few just notions existing disconnected and confused among

the mass of vain and false ones, which will, like noxious weeds, infest

minds left in ignorance, are not _permitted_ by those bad associates to do

their duty. Weak by being few, insulated, unsupported, and dwelling among

vicious neighbors, they not only cannot perform their own due service, but

are liable to be seduced to that of the evil principles whose company they

are condemned to keep. The _conjunction_ of truths is of the utmost

importance for preserving the genuine tendency, and securing the

appropriate efficacy, of each. It is an unhappy "lack of knowledge" when

there is not enough to preserve, to what there is of it, the honest

beneficial quality of knowledge. How many of the follies, excesses, and

crimes, in the course of the world, have taken their pretended warrant

from some fragment of truth, dissevered from the connection of truths

indispensable to its right operation, and in that detached state easily

perverted into coalescence with the most pernicious principles, which

concealed and gave effect to their malignity under the falsified authority

of a truth.

There were many and melancholy exemplifications of all we have said of

ignorance, in the conduct of that ancient people at present in our view.

Doubtless a sad proportion of the iniquities which, by their necessary

tendency and by the divine vindictive appointment, brought plagues and

destruction upon them, were committed in violation of what they knew. But

also it was in no small part from blindness to the manifestation of truth

and duty incessantly confronting them, that they were betrayed into crimes

and consequent miseries. This is evident equally from the language in

which their prophets reproached their intellectual stupidity, and from the

surprise which they sometimes seem to have felt on finding themselves

involved in retributive suffering, for what they could not conceive to be

serious delinquencies. It appeared as if they had never so much as dreamed

of such a-consequence; and their monitors had to represent to them, that

it had been through their thoughtlessness of divine dictates and warnings,

if they did not _know_ that such proceedings must provoke such an

infliction.

How one portion of knowledge admitted, with the exclusion of other truths

equally indispensable to be known, may not only be unavailing, but may in

effect lend force to destructive error, is dreadfully illustrated in the

final catastrophe of that favored guilty nation. They were in possession

of the one important point of knowledge, that a Messiah was to come. They

held this assurance not slightly, but with strong conviction, and as a

matter of the utmost interest. But then, that this knowledge might have

its appropriate and happy effect, it was of essential necessity for them

to know also the character of this Messiah, and the real nature of his

great design. But this they closed up their understandings in a fatal

contentment not to know. Literally the whole people, with a diminutive

exception, had failed, or rather refused, to admit, as to that part of the

subject, the inspired declarations.

Now comes the consequence of knowing only one thing of several that

require to be inseparable in knowledge. They formed to themselves a false

idea of the Messiah, according to their own worldly imaginations; and

they extended the full assurance which they justly entertained of his

coming, to this false notion of what he was to be and to accomplish when

he should come. From this it was natural and inevitable that when the

true Messiah should come they would not recognize him, and that their

hostility would be excited against a person who, while demanding to be

acknowledged in that capacity, appeared without the characteristics

pictured in their vain imagination, and with directly opposite ones. And

thus they were placed in an incomparably worse situation for receiving

him with honor when he did appear, than if they had had no knowledge that

a Messiah was to come. For on that supposition they might have regarded

him as a most striking phenomenon, with curiosity and admiration, with

awe of his miraculous powers, and as little prejudice as it is possible

in any case for depravity and ignorance to feel toward sanctity and

wisdom. But this delusive pre-occupation of their minds formed a direct

grand cause for their rejecting Jesus Christ. And how fearful was the

final consequence of _this_ "lack of knowledge!" How truly, in all

senses, the people were destroyed! The violent extermination at length of

multitudes of them from the earth, was but as the omen and commencement

of a deeper perdition. And the terrible memorial is a perpetual

admonition what a curse it is _not to know_. For He, by the rejection of

whom these despisers devoted themselves to perish, while he looked on

their great city, and wept at the doom which he beheld impending, said,

_If_ them hadst _known_, even thou in this thy day.----

So much for that selected people:--we may cast a glance over the rest of

the ancient world, as exemplifying the pernicious effect of the want of

knowledge.

The ignorance which pervaded the heathen nations, was fully equal to the

utmost result that could have been calculated from all the causes

contributing to thicken the mental darkness. The traditional glimmering of

that knowledge which had been originally received by divine communication,

had long since become nearly extinct, having gone out in the act, as it

were, of lighting up certain fantastic inventions of doctrine, by ignition

of an element exhaled from the corruptions of the human soul. In other

words, the primary truths, imparted by the Creator to the early

inhabitants of the earth, gradually losing their clearness and purity, had

passed, by a transition through some delusive analogies, into the vanities

of fancy and notion which sprang from the inventive depravity of man;

which inventions carried somewhat of an authority stolen from the grand

truths they had superseded. And thus, if we except so much instruction as

we may conceive that the extraordinary and sometimes dreadful

interpositions of the Governor of the world might convey, unaccompanied

with declarations in language, (and it was in but an extremely limited

degree that these had actually the effect of illumination,) the human

tribes were surrendered to their own understanding for all that they were

to know and think. Melancholy predicament! The understanding, the

intellect, the reason, which had not sufficed for preserving the true

light from heaven, was to be competent to give light in its absence. Under

the disadvantage of this loss--after the setting of the sun--it was to

exercise itself on an unlimited diversity of important things, inquiring,

comparing, and deciding. All those things, if examined far, extended into

mystery. All genuine thinking was a hard repellent labor. Casual

impressions had a mighty force of perversion. The senses were not a medium

through which the intellect could receive ideas foreign to material

existence. The appetites and passions would infallibly occupy and actuate

the whole man. When by these his imagination was put in activity, its

gleams and meteors would be anything rather than lights of truth. His

interest, according to his gross apprehension of it, would in numberless

instances require, and therefore would gain, false judgments for

justification of the wrong manner of pursuing that interest. And all this

while, there was no grand standard and test to which the notions of things

could be brought. If there were some spirits of larger and purer thought,

that went out in the honest search of truth, they must have felt an

oppression of utter hopelessness in looking round on a world of doubtful

things, on no one of which they could obtain the dictate of a supreme

intelligence. There was no sovereign demonstrator in communication with

the earth, to tell benighted man what to think in any of a thousand

questions which arose to confound him. There were, instead, impostors,

magicians, vain theorists, prompted by ambition and superior native

ability to abuse the credulity of their fellow-mortals, which they did

with such success as to become their oracles, their dictators, or even

their gods. The multitude most naturally surrendered themselves to all

such delusions. If it may be conceived to have been possible that their

feeble and degraded reason, in the absence of divine light and of sound

human discipline, might by earnest exertion have attained in some small

degree to judge better that exertion was precluded by indolence, by the

immediate wants and unavoidable employments of life, by sensuality, by

love of amusement, by subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and

national institutions, and by the tendency of human individuals to fall,

if we may so express it, in dead conformity and addition to the lump.

The result of all these causes, the sum of all these effects, was, that

unnumbered millions of beings, whose value was in their intelligent and

moral nature, were, as to that nature, in a condition analogous to what

their physical existence would have been under a total and permanent

eclipse of the sun. It was perpetual night in their souls, with all the

phenomena incident to night, except the sublimity. While the material

economy, constituting the order of things which belonged to their temporal

existence, was in conspicuous manifestation around them, pressing with its

realities on their senses; while nature presented to them its open and

distinctly-featured aspect; while there was a true light shed on them

every morning from the sun; while they had constant experimental evidence

of the nature of the scene; and thus they had a clear knowledge of one

portion of the things connected with their existence--that portion which

they were soon to leave, and look back upon as a dream when one

awaketh;--all this while there was subsisting, present with them,

unapprehended except in faint and delusive glimpses, another order of

things involving their greatest interest, with no luminary to make that

apparent to them, after the race had willingly forgotten the original

instructions from their Creator.

The dreadful consequences of this "lack of knowledge," as appearing in the

religion and morals of the nations, and through these affecting their

welfare, equalled and even surpassed all that might by theory have been

presaged from the cause.

This ignorance could not annihilate the _principle_ of religion in the

spirit of man; but in taking away the awful repression of the idea of one

exclusive sovereign Divinity, it left that spirit to fabricate its

religion in its own manner. And as the creating of gods might be the most

appropriate way of celebrating the deliverance from the most imposing idea

of one Supreme Being, depraved and insane invention took this direction

with ardor. [Footnote: Those who have read Goethe's Memoirs of Himself,

may recollect the part where that late idolized "patriarch" of German

literature tells of the lively interest he had at one time felt in shaping

out of his imagination and philosophy a theology, beginning with the

fabrication of a god (or gods,) and amplified into a system of principles,

existences, and relations.] The mind threw a fictitious divinity into its

own phantasms, and into the objects in the visible world. It is amazing to

observe how, when one solemn principle was taken away, the promiscuous

numberless crowd of almost all shapes of fancy and of matter became, as it

were, instinct with ambition, and mounted into gods. They were alternately

the toys and the tyrants of their miserable creator. They appalled him

often, and often he could make sport with them. For overawing him by their

supposed power, they made him a compensation by descending to a fellowship

with his follies and vices. But indeed this was a condition of their

creation; they _must_ own their mortal progenitor by sharing his

depravity, even amidst the lordly domination assigned to them over him and

the universe. We may safely affirm, that the mighty artificer of

deifications, the corrupt soul of man, never once, in its almost infinite

diversification of device in their production, struck out a form of

absolute goodness. No, if there were ten thousand deities, there should

not be one that should be authorized by perfect rectitude in itself to

punish _him_; not one by which it should be possible for him to be rebuked

without having a right to recriminate.

Such a pernicious creation of active delusions it was that took the place

of religion in the absence of knowledge. And to this intellectual

obscuration, and this legion of pestilent fallacies, swarming like the

locusts from the smoke of the bottomless pit in the vision of St. John,

the fatal effect on morals and happiness corresponded. Indeed the mischief

done there, perhaps even exceeded the proportion of the ignorance and the

false theology; conformably to the rule, that anything wrong in the mind

will be the _most_ wrong where it comes the nearest to its ultimate

practical effect--except when in this operation outward it is met and

checked by some foreign counteraction.

The people of those nations (and the same description is applicable to

modern heathens) did not know the essential nature of perfect goodness, or

virtue. How should they know it? A depraved mind would not find in itself

any native conception to give the bright form of it. There were no living

examples of it. The men who held the pre-eminence in the community were

generally, in the most important points, its reverse. It was for the

_Divine_ nature to have presented, in a manifestation of itself, the

archetype of perfect rectitude, whence might have been derived the

modified exemplar for human virtue. And so _would_ the idea of perfect

moral excellence have come to dwell and shine in the understanding, if it

had been the True Divinity that men beheld in their contemplations of a

superior existence. But when the gods of their heaven were little better

than their own evil qualities, exalted to the sky to be thence reflected

back upon them invested with Olympian charms and splendors, their ideas of

deity would evidently combine with the causes which made it impossible for

them to conceive a perfect model for human excellence. See the mighty

labor of human depravity to confirm its dominion! It would translate

itself to heaven, and usurp divinity, in order to come down thence with a

sanction for man to be wicked,--in order, by a falsification of the

qualities of the Supreme Nature, to preclude his forming the true idea of

what would be perfect rectitude in his own.

A system which could thus associate all the modes of turpitude with the

most lofty and illustrious forms of existence, would go far toward

vitiating essentially the entire theory of moral good and evil. And it

would in a great measure defraud of their practical efficacy any just

principles that might, after all, maintain their place in the convictions

of the understanding, and assert at times their claim with a voice which

not even all this ruination could silence.

But, how small was the number of pure moral principles, (if indeed any,)

that among the people of the heathen nations _did_ maintain themselves in

the convictions of the understanding. The privation of divine light gave

full freedom, if there was any disposition to take such license, for every

perverse speculation which could operate toward abolishing those

principles in the natural reason of the species. What disposition there

would be to take it may be imagined, when the abolishing of those

principles was evidently to be also the destruction of all intrinsic

authority in the practical rules founded on them, which destruction would

confer an exemption infinitely desirable. The freedom for such thinking

would infallibly be taken, in its utmost extent; and in fact the

speculation was stimulated by so mighty a force of the depraved passions,

that it went beyond the primary intention: it not only annulled the right

principles and rules, but, not stopping at such negation, presumed to set

forth opposite ones, so that the name and repute of virtues was given to

iniquities without number. It is deplorable to consider how large a

proportion of all the vices and crimes of which mankind were ever guilty,

have actually constituted, in some or other of their tribes and ages, a

part of the approved moral and religious system. It is questionable

whether we could select from the worst forms of turpitude any one which

has not been at least admitted among the authorized customs, if not even

appointed among the institutes of the religion, of some portion of the

human race. And depravities thus become licensed or sacred would have a

fatal facility of communicating somewhat of their quality to all the other

parts of the moral system. For this sanction both would reinforce their

own power of infection, and would so beguile away all repugnance and

counteraction, that the rest of the customs and institutes would readily

admit the contamination, and become assimilated in evil; as the Mohamedans

have no care to avoid contact with their neighbors who are ill of the

plague, since the plague has the warrant of heaven. Wherever, therefore,

in the imperfect notices afforded us of ancient nations, we find any one

virulent iniquity holding an authorized place in custom or religion, we

may confidently make a very large inference, though record were silent, as

to the corresponding quality that would pervade the remainder of the moral

system of those nations. Indeed the inference is equally justified whether

we regard such a sanction and establishment of a flagrant iniquity as a

cause, or as an effect. Suppose this sanction of some one enormity to

_precede_ the general and equal corruption of morals,--how powerfully

would it tend to bear them all down to a conformity in depravation.

Suppose it to be (the more natural order) the result and completion of

that corruption--how vicious must have been the previous state which could

go easily and consistently to such a consummation.

Everything that, under the advantage given by this destitution of

knowledge, operated to the destruction of the true morality, both in

theory and practice, must have had a fatal augmentation of its power in

that part especially of this ignorance which respected hereafter. The

doctrine of a future existence and retribution did not, in any rational

and salutary form, interfere in the adjustment of the economy of life. The

shadowy notion of a future state which hovered about the minds of the

pagans, a vague apparition which alternately came and vanished, was at

once too fantastic and too little of a serious belief to be of any avail

to preserve the rectitude, or to maintain the authority, of the

distinction between right and wrong. It was not denned enough, or noble

enough, or convincing enough, or of judicial application enough, either to

assist the efficacy of such moral principles as might be supposed to be

innate in a rational creature, and competent for prescribing to it some

virtues useful and necessary to it even if its present brief existence

were all; or to enjoin effectually those higher virtues to which there can

be no adequate inducement but in the expectation of a future life.

Imagine, if you can, the withdrawment of this doctrine from the faith of

those who have a solemn persuasion of it as a part of revealed truth.

Suppose the grand idea either wholly obliterated, or faded into a dubious

trace of what it had been, or transmuted into a poetic dream of classic or

barbarian mythology,--and how many moral principles will be found to have

vanished with it. How many things, before rendered imperative by this

great article of faith, would have ceased to be duties, or would continue

such only on the strength, and to the extent of the requirement, of some

very minor consideration which might remain to enforce them, and that

probably in a most deteriorated practical form. The sense of obligation,

if continuing to recognize the nature of duty in things which could then

no longer retain any such quality, otherwise than as looking to the most

immediate and tangible benefit or harm, the lowest of moral calculations,

would be reduced to a vulgar and reptile principle. The best of its

strength, and all its dignity, would be departed from it when it could

refer no more to eternity, an invisible world, and a judgment to come. It

would therefore have none of that emphasis of impression which can

sometimes dismay and quell the most violent passions, as by the mysterious

awe of the presence of a spirit. It would be deprived of that which forms

the chief power of conscience. And it would be impotent in any attempt--if

so absurd an attempt could be dreamed of--to uphold, in the more dignified

character of _principle_, that care of what is right which would be

constantly degenerating into mere policy, and rationally justifying itself

in doing so.

The withdrawment, we said, of the grand truth in question, from a man's

faith, (together with everything of taste and _habit_ which that faith

might have created,) would necessarily break up the government over his

conscience. How evident then is it, that among the people of the heathen

lands, under a disastrous ignorance of this and all the other sublime

truths, that are the most fit to rule an immortal being during his sojourn

on earth, no man could feel any peremptory obligation to be universally

virtuous, or adequate motives to excite an endeavor to approach that high

attainment, even were there not a perfect inability to form the true

conception of it. And then how much of course it was that the general mass

would be dreadfully depraved. Though a momentary surprise may at times

have seized us on the occurrence, in their history, of some monstrous form

of flagitiousness, we do not wonder at beholding a state of the people

such in its general character as the sacred writers exhibit, in

descriptions to which the other records of antiquity add their confirming

testimony and ample illustrations. For while the immense aggregate is

displayed to the mental view, as pervaded, agitated, and stimulated, by

the restless forces of appetites and passions, and those forces operating

with an impulse no less perverted than strong, let it be asked what kinds

and measure of restraint there could be upon such a world of creatures so

actuated, to keep them from rushing in all ways into evil. Conceive, if

you can, the fiction of such a multitude, so actuated, having been placed

under an adjustment of restraints competent to withhold them. And then

take off, in your imagination, one after another of these, to see what

will follow. Take off, at last, all the coercion that can be applied

through the belief of a judgment to come, and a future state of

retribution;--by doing which you would also empower the race to defy, if

any recognition of him remained, the Supreme Governor, whose possible

inflictions, being confined to the present life, might at any time be

escaped by shortening it. All these sacred bonds being thus dissolved,

behold this countless multitude abandoned to be carried or driven the

whole length to which the impulses of their appetites and passions would

go,--or could go before they were arrested by some obstruction opposed to

them from a quarter foreign to conscience. And the main and final thing in

reserve to limit their career, after all the worthier restraints were

annihilated, would be only this,--the resistance which men's self-interest

opposes to one another's bad inclinations. A gloomy and humiliating

spectacle truly it is, to be offered by a world of rational and moral

agents, if we see that, instead of a repression of the propensity to

wickedness by reverence of the Sovereign Judge, and the anticipation of a

future life, there is merely a restraint put on its external activity, and

that by the force of men's fears of one another. But nearly to this it

was, as the only strong restraint, that those heathens were left by their

ignorance, or a notion so slight as to be little better, of a future

existence and judgment.

Not but that it has been, in all nations and times, of infinite practical

service that there is involved in the constitution of the world a law by

which a coarse self-interest thus interposes to obstruct in a degree the

violent propensity to evil; for it has prevented, under Providence, more

actual mischief, beyond comparison more, than all other causes together.

The man inclined to perpetrate an iniquity, of the nature of a wrong to

his fellow-mortals, is apprized that he shall provoke a reaction, to

resist or punish him; that he shall incur as great an evil as that he is

disposed to do, or greater; that either a revenge regardless of all

formalities of justice will strike him, or a process instituted in

organized society will vindictively reach his property, liberty, or life.

This defensive array, of all men against all men, compels to remain shut

up within the mind an immensity of wickedness which is there burning to

come out into action. But for this, Noah's flood had been rendered

needless. But for this, our planet might have been accomplishing its

circles round the sun for thousands of years past without a human

inhabitant. Through the effect of this essential law, in the social

economy, it was possible for the race to subsist, notwithstanding all that

ignorance of the Divine Being, of heavenly truth, and of uncorrupt

morality, in which we are contemplating the heathen nations as benighted.

But while thus it prevented utter destruction, it had no corrective

operation on the depravity of the heart. It was not through a judgment of

things being essentially evil that they were forborne; it was not by the

power of conscience that wicked propensity was kept under restraint. It

was only by a hold on the meaner principles of his nature, that the

offender in will was arrested in prevention of the deed. And so the race

were such virtually, as they would have hastened to become actually, could

they have ceased to be afraid of one another's strength and retaliation.'

[Footnote: It is not very uncommon to hear credit given to human nature

apparently in sober simplicity, for the whole amount of the negation of

bad actions _thus_ prevented, as just so much genuine virtue, by some

dealers in moral and theological speculation.] But even this restraint

imposed by mutual apprehension, important as its operation was in the

absence of nobler influences, was yet of miserably partial efficacy. Men

were continually breaking through this protective provision, and committed

against one another a stupendous amount of crimes. And no wonder, when we

consider that the evil passions, endowed as they seem to be with a

portentous excess of vigor by the very circumstance of _being_ evil, (as

the demoniacs were the strongest of men,) are exasperated the more by a

certain degree of awe impressed on them by the defensive attitude of their

objects. When strength so great might thus be irritated to greater, and

when there were no "powers of the world to come," to invade the dreadful

cavern of iniquity in the mind, and there combat and subdue it, there

would often be no want of the audacity to send it forth into action at all

hazards, and in defiance and contempt of the restraining force which

operated through mutual fear of vindictive reaction.

But it may be said, perhaps, that in thus representing the people who were

destitute of divine knowledge, as left with hardly any other control on

their bad dispositions than one of a quality little more dignified than

fetters literally binding the limbs, we are underrating what there still

was among them to take effect in the way of _instruction_. Even this

coarse principle of control itself, it may be alleged, this prudence of

reciprocal fear became refined into something worthier of moral agents.

For it passed, by a compromise among the species, from the form of

individual self-defence and revenge into that of institutions of _law_;

and legislation, it will be said, is a teacher of morals. Retaining,

indeed, the rough expedient of physical force, in readiness to coerce or

punish where it cannot deter by warning, it yet strongly endeavors the

repression of evil emotions by means of right _principles_, marked out,

explained, and inculcated. It _teaches_ these principles as dictates of

reason and justice, while it embodies them in the menacing authority of

enactments. There was therefore, it may be pleaded, as much _instruction_

among the ancient heathen as there was legislation.

In answering this, we may forego any rigorous examination of the quality

of principles and precepts enunciated by legislators who themselves, in

common with the people, looked on human existence and duty through a worse

than twilight medium; who had no divine oracles to impart wisdom, and

were, some of them, reduced to begin their operations with the lie that

pretended they had such oracles; from all which it was inevitable that

some of their maxims and injunctions would even in their efficacy be

noxious, as being at variance with eternal rectitude. It is enough to

observe, on the claims of legislation to the character of a moral

preceptor, that it retained so palpably, after all, the nature of the

gross element from which it was a refinement or transfusion, that even

what it might teach right, as to the matter, it was unable to teach with

the right moral impression. With all its gravity, and phrases of wisdom,

and show of homage to virtue, it was, and was plainly descried to be, that

very same _Noli me tangere,_ in a disguised form; a less provoking and

hostile manner only of keeping up the state of preparation for defensive

war. Every one knew right well that the pure approbation and love of

goodness were not the source of law; but that it was an arrangement

originating and deriving all its force from self-interest; a contrivance

by which each man was glad to make the collective strength of society his

guarantee against his neighbor's interest and wish to do him wrong. While

pleased that others were under this restraint, he was often vexed at being

under it also himself; but on the whole deemed this security worth the

cost of suffering the interdict on his own inclinations,--perhaps as

believing other men's to be still worse than his, or seeing their strength

to be greater. We repeat that a preceptive system thus estimated could

not, even had the principles to which it gave expression in the mandates

of law been no other than those of the soundest morality, have impressed

them with the weight of sanctity on the conscience. And all this but tends

to show the necessity that the rules and sanctions of morality, to come

with simplicity and power on the human mind, should primarily emanate, and

be acknowledged as emanating, from a Being exalted above all implication

and competition of interest with man.

Thus we see, that the pagan ignorance precluded one grand requisite for

crushing the dominion of iniquity; for there was nothing to insinuate or

to force its way into the recesses of the soul, to apply _there_ a

repressive power to the depraved ardor which glowed in the passions. That

was left, inaccessible and inextinguishable, as the subterranean fires in

a volcanic region. And in the mighty impulse to evil with which it was

continually operating as an energy of feeling, it compelled the

subservience of the intellect; and thus combined the passions with a

faculty skilful to guide their direction, to diversify their objects, to

invent expedients, and to seize and create occasions. What was it that

this intelligent depravity would stop short of accomplishing? Reflect on

the extent of human genius, in its powers of invention, combination, and

adaptation; and then think of all this faculty, in an immense number of

minds, through many ages, and in every imaginable variety of situation,

exerted with unremitting activity in aid of the wrong propensities.

Reflect how many ideas, apt and opportune for this service, would spring

up casually, or be suggested by circumstances, or be attained by the

earnest study of beings goaded in pursuit of change and novelty. The

simple modes of iniquity were put under an active ministry of art, to

combine, innovate, and augment. And so indefatigable was its exercise,

that almost all conceivable forms of immorality were brought to

imagination, most of them into experiment; and the greater number into

prevailing practice, in those nations: insomuch that the sated monarch

would have imposed as difficult a task on ingenuity in calling for the

invention of a new vice, as of a new pleasure. They would perhaps have

been nearly identical demands when he was the person to be pleased.

Such are some of the most obvious illustrations that the absence of

knowledge was a cause, and added in an unknown measure to the strength of

all other causes, of the excessive corruption in the heathen nations. And

if this depravity of a world of moral agents did not, contemplated simply

as a destruction of their _rectitude_, appear equivalent to the gravest

import of the terms "the people are destroyed," the _misery_ inseparable

from the depravity instantly comes in our view to complete their

verification.

We are aware that the wickedness and misery of the ancient world, as

asserted in illustration of the natural effect of estrangement from divine

truth, are apt to be regarded as of the order of topics which have

dwindled into insignificance, worn out by being repeated just because they

have often been repeated before; a sort of exhausted quarries and dried-up

wells. There is a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in whose

conceit nothing is such proof of superior sense as discarding the

greatest number of topics and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is

to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing again the old maxims,

that a people without divine instruction must be a vicious one, and that a

vicious people must be an unhappy one,--and those maxims accompanied with

a description of the old pagan world as illustrative evidence,--will be

prompt to let forth their comments in some such strain as the

following:--"The state of the ancient heathens, thus brought upon us in

one cheap declamation more, is now a matter of trivial import, just fit to

give some show and exaggeration to the stale common-place, that ignorance

is likely to produce depravity, and that depravity and misery are likely

enough to go together. The pagans might be wretched enough; and perhaps

also the matter has been extravagantly magnified for the service of a

favorite theme, or to make a rhetorical show. At any rate, it is not now

worth while to go so far back to concern ourselves about it. The ancient

heathens had their day and their destiny, and it is of little importance

to us what they were or suffered."

It is fortunate, we may reply, to be "wiser than the ancients," without

the trouble of _learning_ anything by means of them. It is fortunate,

also, to have ascertained how much of all that ever existed can teach us

nothing. We have a signal improvement in the fashion of wisdom, when that

high endowment may be possessed as a thing distinct from compass of

thought, from study of causes and effects as illustrated on the great

scale, from aptitude to be instructed by the past, and from contemplation

of the divine government as carried over a wide extent of time. But indeed

this is not a privilege peculiar to this later day. In any former age

there were men in sufficient number who were wise enough to be indifferent

to all but immediate passing events, as knowing no lessons that persons

like them had to learn from remoter views, looking either into the past or

the future; who could even have before them the very monuments of awful

events that were gone by, without perceiving inscribed on them any

characters for contemplation to read. It is not impossible there might be

persons who could plan their schemes, and debate their questions, and even

follow their amusements, quite exempt from solemn reflections, within view

of the ruins of Jerusalem, after the Roman legions had left it and its

myriads of dead to silence. Any reference to that dreadful spectacle, as

an example of the consequences of the ignorance and wickedness of a

people, might have been heard with unconcern, and lightly passed over as

foreign to the matters requiring their attention: it was all over with the

people dead, and the people alive had their own concerns to mind. But

would not exactly such as these have been the men most likely to fall into

the vices and impieties which would provoke the next avenging visitation,

and to perish in it? In all times, the triflers with the great

exemplifications of the connection of depravity with misery and ruin, who

thought it but an impertinent moralizing that attempted to recall such

funereal spectacles for admonition, were fools, whatever self-complacency

they might feel in a habit of thinking more fitted, they would perhaps

say, for making our best advantage of the world as we find it. And we of

the present time are convicted of exceeding stupidity, if we think it not

worth while to go a number of ages back to contemplate the mass of

mankind, the wide world of beings such as ourselves, sunk in darkness and

wretchedness, and to consider what it is that is taught by so melancholy

an exhibition. What is to give fulness of evidence to an instruction, if a

world be too narrow; what is to give it weight, if a world be too light?

It is to be acknowledged, that the mental darkness which we are

representing as so greatly the cause of the wickedness and unhappiness of

those nations of old, had the effect of protecting them, in a measure,

from some kinds of suffering. They had not, as we have been observing,

illumination enough, to have conscience enough, for inflicting the

severest pains of remorse; and for oppressing them with a distinct

alarming apprehension of a future account. But that they were unhappy,

was practically acknowledged in the very quality of what they ardently

and universally sought as the highest felicities of existence. Those

delights were violent and tumultuous, in all possible ways and degrees

estranged from reflection, and adverse to it. The whole souls of great

and small, in the most barbarous and in the more polished state, were

passionately set on revelry, on expedients for inflaming licentiousness

to madness; or concourses of multitudes for pomps, celebrations, shows,

games, combats; on the riots of exultation and revenge after victories.

The ruder nations had, in their way, however pitiable on the score of

magnificence, their grand festive, triumphal, and demoniac confluxes and

revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people of the savage and the

more cultivated nations sacrificed everything belonging to the peaceful

economy of life, with a desperate, frantic fury. All this was the

confession that there was little felicity in the heart or in the home.

Nor was it found in these resources; if the wild elation might be

mistaken for happiness while it lasted, it was brief in each instance,

and it subsided in an aggravated dreariness of the soul.

The fact of their being unhappy had a still more gloomy attestation in the

mutual enmity which seems to have been of the very essence of life so

vital a principle, that it could not be spared for an hour. No, they could

not live without this luxury drawn from the fountains of death! What is

the most conspicuous material of ancient history, what is it that glares

out the most hideously from that darkness and oblivion in which the old

world is veiling its aspect, but the incessant furies of miserable mortals

against their fellow-mortals, "hateful and hating one another?" We cannot

look that way but we see the whole field covered with inflicters and

sufferers, not seldom interchanging those characters. If that field widens

to our view, it is still, to the utmost line to which the shade clears

away, a scene of cruelty, oppression, and slavery; of the strong trampling

on the weak, and the weak often attempting to bite at the feet of the

strong; of rancorous animosities and murderous competitions of persons

raised above the mass of the community; of treacheries and massacres; and

of war between hordes, and cities, and nations, and empires; war _never_,

in spirit, intermitted, and suspended sometimes in act only to acquire

renewed force for destruction, or to find another assemblage of hated

creatures to cut in pieces. Powerful as "the spirit of the first-born

Cain" has continued, down to our age, and in the most improved divisions

of mankind, there was, nevertheless, in the ancient pagan race, (as there

is in some portions of the modern,) a more complete, uncontrolled

actuation of the all-killing, all-devouring fury, a more absolute

possession of Moloch.

Now it is _as misery_ that we are exhibiting all this depravity. To be

thus, _was suffering_. The disease and the pain are inseparable in the

description, and they were so in the reality. And both together,

inevitably seizing on beings who had rejected or lost divine knowledge,

maintained a hold as fatal and invincible as that of the intervolved

serpents of Laocoon.

It is true, that a comprehensive estimate of the state of the people we

are contemplating, would bring in view several minor circumstances which,

though not availing to change materially the effect of the picture, are

themselves of less gloomy color. But at the same time such an estimate

would include other forms also of infelicity, besides those which were at

once the result and punishment of depravity, the stings with which sin

rewarded the infatuation that loved it. If the design had been to exhibit

anything like a general view, we must have taken account of such

particulars as these: the unhappiness of being without an assurance of an

all-comprehending and merciful Providence, and of wanting therefore the

best support in sorrow and calamity; the insuppressible impatience, or the

deep melancholy, with which the more thoughtful persons must have seen

departing from life, leaving them hopeless of ever meeting again in a life

elsewhere, the relations or associates who were dear to them in spite of

the prevailing effect of paganism to destroy philanthropy; and the gloomy

sentiment with which they must have thought of their own continual

approach toward death; a sentiment not always unaccompanied with certain

intimidating hints and hauntings of possibilities in the darkness beyond

that confine. But the more limited intention in the preceding description

has been to illustrate their unhappiness as inflicted by their depravity,

necessarily consequent on their ignorance. And what words so true, so

irresistibly prompted at the view of such a scene, as those pronounced of

a nation that at once despised the pagans and imitated them,--"The people

are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

* * * * *

Let us not be suspected of having lost sight of the fact, that vice and

misery have, in our nature, a deeper source than ignorance; or of being so

absurd as to imagine that if the inestimable truths unknown to the heathen

world had been, on the contrary, in all men's knowledge, but a slight

portion of the depravity and wretchedness we have described could then

have had an existence. To say, that under long absence of the sun any

tract of terrestrial nature _must infallibly_ be reduced to desolation, is

not to say or imply, that under the benignant influence of that luminary

the same region must, as necessarily and unconditionally, be a scene of

beauty; but the only hope, for the only possibility, is for the field

visited by much of that sweet influence. And it were an absurdity no less

gross in the opposite extreme to the one just mentioned, to assert the

uselessness, for rectifying the moral world, of a diffusion of the

knowledge which shall compel men to see what is wrong; to deny that the

impulses of the corrupt passions and will must suffer some abatement of

their force and daring when encountered, like Balaam meeting the angel, by

a clear manifestation of their bad and ruinous tendency, by a convinced

judgment, a protesting conscience, and the aspect of the Almighty

Judge,--instead of their being under the tolerance of a judgment not

instructed to condemn them, or, (as ignorance is sure to quicken into

error,) perverted to abet them.