IX.] MELANCHOLY HOUKS. 3C7 



degeneracy in human nature : " Man," says he, '* comes 

 into existence, not as from the hands of a mother, but of 

 a step-dame nature, with a body feeble, naked and fra- 

 gile, and a mind exposed to anxiety and care, abject in 

 fear, unmeet for labour, prone to licentiousness, in 

 which, however, there still dwell some sparks of the Di- 

 vine Mind, though obscured, and as it were in ruins." 

 And, in another place, he intimates it as a current 

 opinion, that man comes into the world as into a state 

 of punishment expiatory of crimes committed in some 

 previous stage of existence, of which we now retain no 

 recollection. 



From these proofs, and from daily observations and 

 experience, there is every ground for concluding that 

 man is in a state of misery and depravity quite incon- 

 sistent with the happiness for which, by a benevolent 

 God, he must have been created. We see glaring marks 

 of this in our OAvn times. Prejudice alone blinds us to 

 the absurdity and the horror of those systematic murders 

 which go by the name of wars ; where man falls on man, 

 brother slaughters brother ; where death, in every variety 

 of horror, preys " on the finely fibred human frame," 

 and where the cry of the widow and the orphan rise up to 

 Heaven long after the thunder of the fight and the clang 

 of arms have ceased, and the bones of sons, brothers, and 

 husbands slain are grown white on the field. Customs 

 like these vouch, with most miraculous organs, for the 

 depravity of the human heart ; and these are not the most 

 mournful of the considerations which present themselves 

 to the mind of the thinking man. 



Private life is equally fertile in calamitous perversion 

 of reason and extreme accumulation of misery. On the 

 one hand, we see a large proportion of men sedulously 

 employed in the eduction of their own ruin, pursuing 

 vice in all its varieties, and sacrificing the peace and 

 ha})piness of the innocent and unoifending to their own 

 brutal gratifications; and on the other, pain, misfortune 

 and misery, overwhelming alike the good and the bad, 

 the provident and the improvident. But too general a 

 view would distract our attention : let the reader pardon 



