Preface

[Transcriber's note: It appears that the author _may have_ used '
and " interchangeably throughout this text to mean "minutes" whereas
traditionally, ' is used to mean minutes and " seconds. Not knowing
the author's intent, I have left these characters as they were in the
original.]

Preface.

If any thing connected with the hardness of the human heart could surprise
us, it surely would be the indifference with which men live on, engrossed
by their worldly objects, amid the sublime natural phenomena that so
eloquently and unceasingly speak to their imaginations, affections, and
judgments. So completely is the existence of the individual concentrated
in self, and so regardless does he get to be of all without that
contracted circle, that it does not probably happen to one man in ten,
that his thoughts are drawn aside from this intense study of his own
immediate wants, wishes, and plans, even once in the twenty-four hours, to
contemplate the majesty, mercy, truth, and justice, of the Divine Being
that has set him, as an atom, amid the myriads of the hosts of heaven and
earth.

The physical marvels of the universe produce little more reflection than
the profoundest moral truths. A million of eyes shall pass over the
firmament, on a cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled
with a proper sense of the power of the dread Being that created all that
is there--not a hundred hearts glow with the adoration that such an appeal
to the senses and understanding ought naturally to produce. This

indifference, in a great measure, comes of familiarity; the things that we
so constantly have before us, becoming as a part of the air we breathe,
and as little regarded.

One of the consequences of this disposition to disregard the Almighty
Hand, as it is so plainly visible in all around us, is that of
substituting our own powers in its stead. In this period of the world, in
enlightened countries, and in the absence of direct idolatry, few men are
so hardy as to deny the existence and might of a Supreme Being; but, this
fact admitted, how few really feel that profound reverence for him that
the nature of our relations justly demands! It is the want of a due sense
of humility, and a sad misconception of what we are, and for what we were
created, that misleads us in the due estimate of our own insignificance,
as Compared with the majesty of God.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware how much
remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope to acquire.
We hear a great deal of god-like minds, and of the far-reaching faculties
we possess; and it may all be worthy of our eulogiums, until we compare
ourselves in these, as in other