PREFACE. v. 



misery which their wickedness scatters around them. They 

 see men, who suffer their bad passions and gross appetites 

 to be the sole rule of their conduct; and whether these 

 shew themselves in an inordinate ambition, a thirst after 

 false glory, or an insatiable avarice, their consequences are 

 pernicious, and diffuse evil, distress, and ruin among man- 

 kind, in proportion to the extent to which their baneful 

 influence reaches. The misanthrope, in contemplating the 

 scene of mischief and disorder, is apt to arraign the wisdom 

 .and justice of Providence for permitting it to exist; but the 

 philanthropist views it with a more extended range of vision; 

 and while he laments the evil, he attributes the apparent 

 want of human feelings in the actors, to an early perversion 

 of intellect, or to a stifling of the reasoning power given 

 by the Great Creator to man for his guide, and without 

 which he is the worst animal in the creation, a mere two- 

 legged Tiger. Upon the childhood and youth of such 

 men, the great truth taught by the inspired and wisest 

 writers of all ages, that "no life can be pleasing to God 

 which is not useful to man," has not been sufficiently im- 

 pressed, or probably the energy with which they pursue their 

 wicked career might have been led into a different course, 

 and instead of the scourges, they would have been the 

 benefactors of mankind. 



When religion and morality are blended together in the 

 mind, they impart their blessings to all who seek the aid of 

 the one and obey the dictates of the other, and their joint 

 effects are seen and felt in the perpetual cheerfulness they 

 impart. They incite the innocent whistle of the ploughman 

 at his plough, of the cobbler in his stall, and the song of 

 the milk-maid at her pail: and it is a sign of their being 

 perverted, when they engender melancholy notions ; for 



