6 



of perfection, than is to be found in the earth we 

 inhabit. It were easy for our imaginations to 

 portray a world in which love, and peace, and 

 joy should universally prevail; in which the 

 passions of intelligent beings, nicely balanced, 

 should yield without an effort to the guidance of 

 reason and duty ; in which the mental powers 

 should be accurate, penetrating, and unbiassed; 

 and in which external nature, harmonising with 

 this perfection of the moral and intellectual 

 powers, should be always serene, beautiful and 

 exhuberant blessing the ear with sounds of 

 sweetest melody, charming the eye with sights 

 of uncloying beauty, exhaling the most delicious 

 perfumes, and filling all the senses with endless 

 delight. In such a world the perfections of the 

 great Creator would be openly displayed, and 

 the whole relations of rnind arid matter would, 

 almost intuitively, exhibit the evidence of wise 

 and beneficent design. 



Such was Paradise ; but such is not the pre- 

 sent state of our world. A fearful blight has 

 passed over the face of nature, and marks of 

 imperfection and disorder every where perplex 

 the enquiring mind. In the intellectual world 

 there are error and ignorance, fatuity and folly ; 

 in the moral world there are passions, preju- 

 dices, selfishness, wars, cruelties and innume- 

 rable crimes ; and in external nature the air, 

 the earth and the sea teem with agents of appa- 

 rent evil ; whirlwinds and tempests, mildew 

 and drought, with famine arid pestilence in their 



