CSES OF THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL LAW. 295 



a perfect blindness to consequences. By individuals and 

 by communities alike, physical and moral evils are pa- 

 tiently endured, which a true knowledge of the system 

 of Providence would cause to be instantly redressed. 

 Daily health and comfort, lif t itself, are sacrificed through 

 the want of this knowledge. It is not in the heyday oi 

 cheerful, active, and prosperous existence, or when we 

 look only to the things which constitute the greatness of 

 nations, that we become sensible of this truth. We must 

 seek for convictions on the subject beside the death-beds 

 of amiable children, destroyed through ignorance of the 

 rules of health, and hung over by parents who feel that 

 life is nothing to them when these dear beings are no 

 more; in the despairing comfortlessness of the selfish, 

 who have acted through long years on the supposition 

 that the social affections could be starved hurtlessly ; in 

 the pestilences ravaging the haunts of poverty, and re- 

 venging, in a spreading contagion, the neglect by the rich 

 of the haplessness of their penury and disease-stricken 

 neighbors ; in the canker of discontent and crime, which 

 eats into the vitals of a nation in consequence of an un- 

 limited indulgence of acquisitiveness by those possessing 

 the most ready natural resources and standing in the most 

 fortunate positions ; in the national degradation and mis- 

 ery which follows war entered upon in the wantonness 

 of pride, greed, and vanity. Doubtless were the idea 

 vitally present in the minds of all men, that from laws 

 of unswerving regularity every act, thought, and emotion 

 of theirs helps to determine their own future, both by its 

 direct effects on their fate, and its reflection from the 

 future of their fellow- creatures, and this without any 

 possibility of reprieve or extenuation, we should see 

 society presenting a different aspect from what it does, 

 the sum of human misery vastly diminished, and that of 

 the general happiness as much increased. 



I am not to attempt a particular defence of the new 

 view of nature from various odiums thrown upon it, for 

 this can only be rightly done when time has abated pre- 

 judice, and shown more clearly the relation of this phi- 

 losophy to all other views cherished by civilized nations. 

 But I may meanwhile remark its harmony with the great 

 practical principle of Christianity, in establishing the 

 universal brotherhood and social communion of man. 

 4nd not only this, but it extends the principle of human- 



