sterday for a thief,
a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and
despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first
spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene
work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still
joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence
of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an
atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping
for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born
instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar
jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his
gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the
youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the
jailer does not leave open his prison doors--why the judge does not
dismis his case--why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It
is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept
the pardon which he freely offers to all.

"A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent
breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and
the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man,
as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner
the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of
virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and
destroys them.

"After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from
developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not
suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not
suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ
much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that
of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of
reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?"

"The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,