In these
solemn moments man discovers the germ of those vices, which like the
Java tree shed a pestiferous vapour around- death is in the shade! and
he perceives them without abhorrence, because he feels himself drawn
by some cord of love to all his fellow-creatures, for whose follies he
is anxious to find every extenuation in their nature- in himself. If
I, he may thus argue, who exercise my own mind, and have been
refined by tribulation, find the serpent's egg in some fold of my
heart, and crush it with difficulty, shall not I pity those who have
stamped with less vigour, or who have heedlessly nurtured the
insidious reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it sucked? Can
I, conscious of my secret sins, throw off my fellow-creatures, and
calmly see them drop into the chasm of perdition, that yawns to
receive them.- No! no! The agonized heart will cry with suffocating
impatience- I too am a man! and have vices, hid, perhaps, from human
eye, that bend me to the dust before God, and loudly tell me, when all
is mute, that we are formed of the same earth, and breathe the same
element. Humanity thus rises naturally out of humility, and twists the
cords of love that in various convolutions entangle the heart.
This sympathy extends still further, till a man well pleased
observes force in arguments that do not carry conviction to his own
bosom, and he gladly places in the fairest light, to himself, the
shews of reason that have led others astray, rejoiced to find some
reason in all the errors of man; though before convinced that he who
rules the day makes his sun to shine on all.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228