knows that he is incapable?
The preacher's last word is a factor in the man's conduct, and it may
be a most important factor, unlocking moral energies which might
otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the preacher thoroughly
feel that words of enlightenment, courage, and admonition enter into
the list of forces employed by Nature herself for man's amelioration,
since she gifted man with speech, he will suffer no paralysis to fall
upon his tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully, and not until its
barrenness has been demonstrated beyond a doubt let the sentence go
forth, 'Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?'

I remember when a youth in the town of Halifax, some two-and-thirty
years ago, attending a lecture given by a young man to a small but
select audience. The aspect of the lecturer was earnest and
practical, and his voice soon rivetted attention. He spoke of duty,
defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kindling vigour in his
words which must have strengthened the sense of duty in the minds of
those who heard him. No speculations regarding the freedom of the
will could alter the fact that the words of that young man did me
good. His name was George Dawson. He also spoke, if you will allow
me to allude to it, of a social subject much discussed at the
time--the Chartist subject of 'levelling.' Suppose, he says, two men
to be equal at night, and that one rises at six, while the other
sleeps till nine next morning, what becomes of your levelling? And in
so speaking be made himself the mouthpiece of Nature, which, as we
have seen, secures advance, not by the reduction of all to a common
level, but by the encouragement and conservation of what is best.

It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my hypothetical
criminal, I am assuming a state of things brought about by the
influence of religions which include the dogmas of theology and the
belief in freewill--a state, namely, in which a moral majority control
and keep in awe an immoral minority. The heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Withdraw, then, our
theologic sanctions, including the belief in free-will, and the
condition of the race will be typified by the samples of individual
wickedness which have been above adduced. We shall all, that is,
become robbers, and ravishers, and murderers. From much that has been
written of late it would seem that this astounding inference finds
house-room in many minds. Possi