se, and abounding with situations and
occasions to call forth the multiplied excellencies of their nature.
"Happy, happy world, with what delight must your great Creator and
Governor witness your conduct, and what large and merited rewards await
you when your term of probation shall have expired.

"I, bone, quo virtus tua te vocat, i pede fausto,
Grandia laturus meritorum praemia."

But we have indulged too long in these delightful speculations; a sad
reverse presents itself on our survey of the _actual_ state of man,
when, from viewing his _natural_ powers, we follow him into _practice_,
and see the uses to which he applies them. Take in the whole of the
prospect, view him in every age, and climate, and nation, in every
condition and period of society. Where now do you discover the
characters of his exalted nature? "How is the gold become dim, and the
fine gold changed?" How is his reason clouded, his affections
perverted; his conscience stupified! How do anger, and envy, and
hatred, and revenge, spring up in his wretched bosom! How is he a slave
to the meanest of his appetites! What fatal propensities does he
discover to evil! What inaptitude to good!

Dwell awhile on the state of the ancient world; not merely on that
benighted part of it where all lay buried in brutish ignorance and
barbarism, but on the seats of civilized and polished nations, on the
empire of taste, and learning, and philosophy: yet in these chosen
regions, with whatever lustre the sun of science poured forth its rays,
the moral darkness was so thick "that it might be felt." Behold their
sottish idolatries, their absurd superstitions, their want of natural
affection, their brutal excesses, their unfeeling oppression, their
savage cruelty! Look not to the illiterate and the vulgar, but to the
learned and refined. Form not your ideas from the conduct of the less
restrained and more licentious; you will turn away with disgust and
shame from the allowed and familiar habits of the decent and the moral.
St. Paul best states the facts, and furnishes the explanation; "because
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them over to
a reprobate mind[2]."

Now direct your view to another quarter, to the inhabitants of a new
hemisphere, where the baneful practices and contagious example of the
old world had never travelled. Surely, among these children of nature we
may expect to find those virtuous tendencies, for which we have hit