Part 7 (1/2)

Now suppose all these worthy persons, with so ainst thelected education, and is it any wonder that they can adhtened; that they have an uncertain and capricious test of what is genuine, and not e plausible seht by some fanciful exhibition of a truth which would be of too intellectual a substance as presented in its pure simplicity; and should be ready to receive with approbation not a little of what is a heavy disgrace to the naious doctrine and ministration? Where is the wonder that crudeness, incoherence, and inconsistency of notions, should not disappoint and offend minds that have not, ten times since they came into the world, been compelled to form two ideas with precision, and then compare them discriminately or combine them strictly, on any subject beyond the narrow scope of their ordinary pursuits? Where is the wonder, ifzeal and a lofty elevation; if theycant for affectionate solicitude; if they defer to pomatical assertion, when it is so convenient a foundation for all their other faith to believe their teacher is an oracle? No hted himsical conceits as strokes of discovery and surprise, and yet at the same time are pleased with common-place, and endless repetition, as an exearity of diction and illustration, as bringing religion to the level where they are at home?

Nay, if an artful pretender, or half-lunatic visionary, or some poor set of dupes of their own inflated self-iive out that they are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the nuacious exanorant class of persons desirous to secure the benefits of religion, that can be securely relied on to certify the ever offered to therievous to think there should be an active extensive currency of a language conveying crudities, extravagances, arrogant dictates of ignorance, poarities, catches of idle fantasy, and iious instruction to assenorant people But then for thethat currency, so as to drive it at last out of circulation? The thing to be wished is, that it were possible to put so coercion on the _minds_ (we deprecate all other restraint) of the teachers; a compulsion to feel the necessity of infor, the correct use of words, and an honest, careful purpose to ns of as for notoriety lasts, (which will be yet some time,) there will not fail to be ion, in anyto be pleased with them Let us, then, try the inverted order, and endeavor to secure that those who asseht, shall already have learnt so much, _by other means_, that no professed teacher shall feel at liberty to treat the herd But by what other means, except the discipline of the best education possible to be given to them, and the subsequent voluntary self-improvement to which it may be hoped that such an education would often lead?

We cannot disnorance on persons religiously disposed, in rendering thehest subject in a disorderly, perverted, and debased forely with otherwith pleasure an additional testience It arises fro observer, that as a _general_ rule the ion, those who have theand its huion than is evinced by those of less solemn and devout sentiment The former will unquestionably be found, when on the same level as to the measure of natural faculty and the want of previous cultivation, to show ance, anda clear comprehension of that faith, which they feel it is but a reasonable obligation that they should endeavor to understand, if they are to repose on it their most important hopes

Section VI

Thus it has been attempted, we fear with too much prolixity and repetition, to describe the evils attendant on a neglected state of the minds of the people The representation does not conitude and prominence; but it displays that portion of the the effect which the people's ignorance has on their ious interests And we think no one who has attentively surveyed the state and character of the lower orders of the coeration to the picture It is rather to be feared that the reality is of still darker shade; and that a ht be for:--That a certain number of the most observant of the philanthropic persons, who have had most intercourse with the classes in question, for the purposes of instruction, charitable aid, or perhaps of furnishi+ng employment, should relate the most characteristic circumstances and anecdotes within their own experience, illustrative of this ed, without any co sketch, or of a ht repeat, in so s he has heard uttered as disclosing the notions entertained of the Deity, or any part of religion; or those which have been forround and extent of duty and accountableness; or the i the terht relate the judgments they have heard pronounced on characters and particular modes of conduct; on i, in short, which may afford a test of the quality and coht Let the recital include both the expressions of individual conception, and those of the most current s of persons in health, and of those languishi+ng and dying Then let there be produced a numerous assortment of characteristic sa, in a general way, fro the special marks of the cast and direction which that disposition takes through extre because the actor cannot think right, or does not think at all The asses thus recounted, when the actual circu and inseparable, would constitute such an exhibition of fact, as any description of those evils in general ter to rival We can well ie experience,series of illustrations, with a feeling that they could have displayed the subject with a farreflection comes on us, that all this is the description of too probably the major part of the people of our own nation Of this nation, the theyric; of this nation, stretching forth its powers in ambitious enterprise, with infinite pride and cost, to all parts of the globe;--just as if a fa so out to hbors, or ames, or drunken frays, at the very ti dead in the house So that the fame of the nation resounded, and its power made itself felt, in every clime, it was not worth a consideration that a vast proportion of its people were systeion and depravity inseparable from it, to a wretchedness on which that fa aeneration after another, the presiding wisdom in this chief of Christian and Protestant States, should have thrown out the living strength of that state into alency under heaven, rather than that of pro the state itself to the condition of a happy cos What stupendous infatuation, what disastrous ascendency of the Power of Darkness, that this energy should have been sent forth to pervade all parts of the world in quest of objects, to inspirit and accomplish innumerable projects, political and military, and to lavish itself, even to exhaustion and fainting at its vital source, on every alien interest; while here at hoe a part of the social body was in aover the land And it was thus perishi+ng for want of the vivifying principle of knowledge, which one-fifth part of this hty amount of exertion would have been sufficient to diffuse into every corner and cottage in the island Within its circuit, a countlessaway their mortal existence little better, in any view, than mere sentient shapes of matter, and by their depravity iht of the very dust of the balance, in the deliberation whether a grand exertion of the national vigor and resource could have any object so worthy, (with God for the Judge,) as sorandizees pretended to be foreseen, or the obstinate prosecution of soun in the very levity of pride, by a decision in which some perverse individual or party in ascendency had the influence to obtain a corrupt, deluded, or forced concurrence

The national _honor_, perhaps, would be alleged, in a certain s of incalculable consurace_ in the circu the nation could not read the ten commandments Or the national _safety_ has been pleaded to a siravity of patriotic phrases, upon the appearance of so, would have scouted as the very madness of fanaticism any dissuasion that should have advised,--”Do you, instead, apply your best efforts, and the nation's norance and debasement, and you really may venture some little trust in Divine Providence for the nation's safety ious h little more than a century, were enabled to take, with an adequate comprehension of intellect, the su course of the national exertions of this country as the Supree has put to the criminal account of pride and ambition; and if he could then place in contrast to the transactions on which that hty amount has been expended, a sober estiht_ have accomplished for the intellectual and moral exaltation of the people, it could not be without an emotion of horror that he would say, Who is to be accountable, who _has been_ accountable, for this difference? He would no longer wonder at any plagues and judgments which may have been inflicted on such a state And he would solemnly adjure all those, especially, who profess in a peculiar ion, to beware how they implicate themselves, by avowed or even implied approbation, in what hest tribunal If soreat merit and influence, honored performers of valuable public services in certain departiven, in a public capacity, this approbation, he would urge it on their consciences, in the evening of life, to consider whether, in the prospect of that tribunal, they have not one duty yet to perform,--to throw off from their minds the servility to party associations, to estimate as Christians, about to retire from the scene, the actual effects on this nation of a policy which ht have been nearly the same if Christianity had been extinct; and then to record a soleainst a systerading that religion itself into a party

Any reference made to such a prospect implies, that there is attributed to those who can feel its seriousness a state of enerality of what are called publicpolitician, there is nothing on earth that sounds so idly or so ludicrously as a reference to a judgment elsewhere and hereafter, to which the policy and transactions of statesmen are to be carried If the Divine jurisdiction would yield to contract its coround over which a practical infidelity heedlessly disregards or deliberately rejects it, how large a province it would leave free! If it be assumed that the province of national affairs _is_ so left free, on the pretence that they _cannot_ be transacted in faithful conformity to the Christian standard, that plea is reserved to be tried in the great account, when the responsibility for theed For assuredly there will be persons found, to be summoned forth as accountable for that conduct of states which we are conteency could not throw off its responsibility into the air, to be dissipated and lost, like the black s (the improvement of the people) left undone, while a thousand arduous things have been done or strenuously endeavored, cannot be less than an awful charge _somewhere_ And where?--but on all who have voluntarily concurred and co-operated in syste last? Last! nay, not even that; for they have, till recently, as we have seen, thrown it al succession of one to this audit

How many of those who come after them will choose to proceed on the same principles, and htful man to draw out to his view a parallel and contrast, exhibiting, on the one side, the series of objects on which, during several ages, an enory has been directed; and on the other, those iht have been effected by so much of that exertion as he deeht often be inclined to single out particular parts in the actual series, to be put in special contrast over against the possibilities on the opposite line For example; there may occur to his view some inconsiderable island, the haunt of fatal diseases, and rendered productive by rant iniquity; an iniquity which it avenges by opening a pre a moral corrupter of the rest Such an infested spot, nevertheless, may have been one of the most material objects of a widely destructive hich has in effect sunk incalculable treasure in the sea, and in the sands, ditches, and fields of plague-infested shores; with a dreadful sacrifice of blood, life, and all the best s and habits Its possession, perhaps, was the chief prize and triurand exertion, the equivalent for all the cost, misery, and crime

Or there may occur to hiion, where the Christian nations seem to have vied with one another which of thereatest nue of death, to rise and testify for theoverned by the peaceful spirit of their professed religion He reads that his countrymen, conjoined with others, have battled round this fortress, wasting the vicinity, but richlyupon the abodes of thousands of inhabitants within its walls, a thunder and lightning incomparably more destructive than those of nature; and have put fire and earthquake under the fortifications; shouting, ”to ht of the consequent ruin and chase, or compelled an immediate submission, if, indeed, it would then be accepted to disappoint that rage of its horrible consummation They have taken the place,--and they have surrendered it

The next year perhaps they have taken it again; to be again at last given up, on compulsion or in coed previously to all this destructive commotion The operations in this local and very narrow portion of the grand affray of monarchies, he may calculate to have cost his country as much as the amount earned by the toils of half the life of all the inhabitants of one of its populous towns; setting aside from his view the e, the crin tract, the place of abode of people who had little interest in the contest, and no power to prevent it And as all this? He may not be able to divest himent of a moralist and a Christian, in order to think like a statesman; and therefore may find no better reason than that, when despots would quarrel, Britain must fancy itself called upon to take the occasion to prove itself a great power, by bearing a high hand aing soh this should be at the expense of having the scene at ho littlehow to put words together to pray

The question may have been, in one part of the world or another, which of ticked individuals of the san authority, should be actually invested with it, they being equal in the qualifications and dispositions to make the worst use of it And the decision of such a question orthy that England should expend what reth from previous exertions of it in some equally meritorious cause

Or the supposed reviewer of our national history may find, somewhere in his retrospect, that a certain brook or swamp in a wilderness, or a stripe of waste, or the settlenificant traffic, was difficult of adjusthbors; and therefore, national honor and interest equally required that war should be lighted up by land and sea, through several quarters of the globe Or a dissension may have arisen upon the matter of some petty tax on an article of conified on the claim; pride had co; and the resolution was to be prosecuted through a wide tempest of destruction, protracted perhapsin the forced abandon power concerned, of infinitely o; and after an absolutely fathomless aress to final frustration--But there would be no end of recounting facts of this order

Now the coainst the extended rank of such enores of this retrospect, have been realized by an inco series of exertion, an exertion, indeed, continually renovating its own resources I and awful display on the ground of history; the hypothetical good presents itself as a dream; with this circu on the conscience of beings so, a fearful accountableness for its not having been a reality

For such an _island_, as we have supposed our coination, on a space of proportional extent in any part of his native country, taking a district as a detached section of a general national picture And he can figure to himself the result, resplendent upon this tract, of so y, there beneficently expended, as that island had cost: an energy, we mean _equivalent in measure_, while put forth in the infinitely different _mode_ of an exertion, by all appropriate means, to improve the reason, manners, morals, and with them the physical condition of the people What a prevalence of intelligence, what a delightful civility of deportross and obtrusive forms of vice, what domestic decorum, attentive education of the children, appropriateness of manner, and readiness of apprehension in attendance on public offices of religion, sense and good order in assees for the assertion and exercise of civil and political rights! All this he can i his attention fixed a while on the recorded operations against soh every part with the traces and memorials of the often-renewed conflicts of the Christian states And we suppose him to make a collective estiainst that particular devoted place; an estimate which divides this off as a portion of the whole immense quantity of exertion, expended by his country in all that region in the caain endeavor, by a rule of equivalence, to conceive the saine hu forth of strength, physical, mental, and financial, for annoyance and destruction, expended instead, in the operation of effecting the utmost improvement which they _could_ effect, in the mental cultivation and the e town in his own country

In figuring to hireat streaht have passed into this operation, on a detached spot of his country, he will soon have many specific means presented to his view: schools of the most perfect appointment, in every section and corner of the town; a syste with all the people of inferior condition, relatively to the necessity of their practical accordance to the plans of education;[Footnote: It is here confidently presuht state of his senses, at the ht up, in many parts of the land, will hear with conteainst so much interference with the discretion, the liberty of parents;--the discretion, the liberty, forsooth, of bringing up their children a nuisance on the face of the earth] an exceedingly copious supply, for individual possession, of the best books of elee; accompanied, as we need not say, by the sacred volu books for circulation, established under strict order, and with appointave evidence of having made the best use of them; a nuenerally useful and attainable knowledge and arts should be explained and applied, by every expedient of fa a degree of co-operation by those who attended to see and hear; and an abundance of coious instruction on the Sabbath, where there should be wise and zealous h degree of these qualifications in his public teachers of religion, when he is to iine a parallel in this department to the skill and ardor displayed in the supposed military operations He istracy and ainst every cognizable neglect and transgression of good order; a resolute breaking up of all haunts and rendezvous of intemperance, dishonesty and other vice; and the best devised and ad those whom education had failed to preserve froreat variety of undefinable and optional activity of benevolent and intelligent men of local influence

Under so auspicious a combination of discipline, he will not indeed fancy, in his transient vision, that he beholds Athens revived, with its bright intelligence all converted to ion, and happiness; but he will, in sober consistency, we think, hat is known of the relation of cause and effect, i any actual town or city on earth And let it be distinctly kept in view, that to reduce the ideal exhibition to reality, he is not drea of means and resources out of all hurand feats of genius He is just supposing to have been expended, on the population of the town, a encies in so different a forht to any rule of comparative esti, battering, under, one particular foreign town, in one or several cans

If he should perchance be sarcastically questioned, how he can allow hi such a quantity of forces concentrated to act in one exclusive spot, while the rest of the country res; or in such an absurdity as that of fancying that _any_ quantity of those forces could effectually raise one local section of the people e surrounded and unavoidably in constant intercourse with the general radation--he has to reply, that he is fancying no such thing For while he is thus converting, in in town, into intellectual and moral operations on one town at hoination, make a whole country correspond to a whole country? He may conceive the incalculable amount of exertion made by his country, in n territory of which he has selected a particular spot, to have been, on the contrary, expended in the supposed beneficent process on the great scale of this whole nation Then would the hypothetical i a strange insulated pheno in exception and total contrast to the general state of the people, be but a speci the series of such confronted spectacles as far as bitter mortification will let him But he will soon be sick of this process of comparison And how sick will he thenceforward be, to perpetual loathing, of the vain raptures hich an i history of what it will call national glory, acquired by national energy a itself in a continual succession and unlimited extent of extraneous operations, of that kind which has been the grand curse of the hu needful of national welfare, the very _suarded with contemptuous indifference

These observations are not land could in all cases have kept clear of iuinary contests But they are made on the assuhtful religiousand e to a prevailing system, and chained down by a superstition that dares not question the wisdoh national authorities and counsels

What is so admitted and deplored by the true and Christian patriots is, that this nation has gone to an awfully criminal extent beyond the line of necessity; that it has been extreain, and still again, in array for the old work of waste and death; and that the advantage possessed by the preponderating classes in this protestant country, for being instructed (if they had cared for such instruction) to look at these transactions in the light of religion, has reflected a peculiar aggravation on the guilt of a policy persevered in froard of the laws of Christianity, and the warning of accountableness to the Sovereign Judge

These observations assu as a nation so dooor and n enterprise, as to be habitually absolved fronorance _This_ concern is a duty at all events and to an entire certainty; is a duty imperative and absolute; and any pretended necessity for such a direction of the national exertion as would be, through a long succession of time, incompatible with a paramount attention to this, would be a virtual denial of the superintendence of Providence It would be the sa as to assert of an individual, that his duties of other kinds are so ive a cohest interests, and that therefore he stands exeion

Such as we have described has been, for ages, the degraded state of the multitude And such has been the indifference to it, manifested by the superior, the refined, the ascendant portion of the co, could see these sharers with them of the dishonored human nature, in endless numbers around the on conscience that on the a soleht, for that ill arranges to an exclusion from the sphere of rational existence It never occurred to many of them as a question of the s in all these bodies, if only it were there in competence to make theazed at, to be envied, or to be regarded as too high even for envy, and to have the rough business of the world perforht, if they reflected at all on the subject, that the best and ed state of such creatures was to be in the least possible degreetheht not the thought be suggested at sos may be envied in their turns!) how happy _they_ should be, if, with the vast superiority of their advantages, they could still be just as little accountable? But if even in this way, of envy, they received an unwelcoh responsibility, not even then was it suggested to thee to which they would vainly wish to be permitted to plead, ”Were we our brothers' keepers?” And if an office designated in those terms had been named to them, as a part of their duty, by soht have traversed hither and thither, in various conjectures and protracted perplexity, before the objects of that office had been presented explicitly to their apprehension as no other than the reason, principles, consciences, and the whole ar mass They would understand that its condition was, _in so at their door, but probably not in this--We speak generally, and not universally