of all the earth
do right?" and began to write his sermon, afterwards so famous,--"On the
Obligations of an Infinite Creator to a Finite Creature."

It astonished the good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat
mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their
worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old
Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to
his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful to his Maker, and
a great deal manlier and more to his credit, than if he had yielded the
whole matter, and pretended that men had not rights as well as duties.
The same logic which had carried him to certain conclusions with
reference to human nature, this same irresistible logic carried him
straight on from his text until he arrived at those other results, which
not only astonished his people, as was said, but surprised himself. He
went so far in defence of the rights of man, that he put his foot into
several heresies, for which men had been burned so often, it was time,
if ever it could be, to acknowledge the demonstration of the _argumentum
ad ignem_. He did not believe in the responsibility of idiots. He did
not believe a new-born infant was morally answerable for other people's
acts. He thought a man with a crooked spine would never be called to
account for not walking erect. He thought, if the crook was in his
brain, instead of his back, he could not fairly be blamed for any
consequence of this natural defect, whatever lawyers or divines might
call it. He argued, that, if a person inherited a perfect mind, body,
and disposition, and had perfect teaching from infancy, that person
could do nothing more than keep the moral law perfectly. But supposing
that the Creator allows a person to be born with an hereditary or
ingrafted organic tendency, and then puts this person into the hands of
teachers incompetent or positively bad, is not what is called _sin_ or
transgression of the law necessarily involved in the premises? Is not
a Creator bound to guard his children against the ruin which inherited
ignorance might entail on them? Would it be fair for a parent to put
into a child's hands the title-deeds to all its future possessions, and
a bunch of matches? And are not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of
Omniscience?--The minister grew bold in his questions. Had not he as
good right to ask questions as Abraham?

This was the dangerous vei