to keep out of view the true
source of the evil, and without shocking the understanding, may
administer consolation to the pride of human nature. The bulk of
professed Christians are used to speak of man as of a being, who,
naturally pure, and inclined to all virtue, is sometimes, almost
involuntary, drawn out of the right course, or is overpowered by the
violence of temptation. Vice with them is rather an accidental and
temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious
plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind,
is not the natural growth and production of the soil.

Far different is the humiliating language of Christianity. From it we
learn that man is an apostate creature, fallen from his high original,
degraded in his nature, and depraved in his faculties; indisposed to
good, and disposed to evil; prone to vice, it is natural and easy to
him; disinclined to virtue, it is difficult and laborious; that he is
tainted with sin, not slightly and superficially, but radically and to
the very core. These are truths which, however mortifying to our pride,
one would think (if this very corruption itself did not warp the
judgment) none would be hardy enough to attempt to controvert. I know
not any thing which brings them home so forcibly to my own feelings, as
the consideration of what still remains to us of our primitive dignity,
when contrasted with our present state of moral degradation,

"Into what depth thou seest,
From what height fallen."

Examine first with attention the natural powers and faculties of man!
invention, reason, judgment, memory; a mind "of large discourse,"
"looking before and after," reviewing the past, and thence determining
for the present, and anticipating the future; discerning, collecting,
combining, comparing; capable not merely of apprehending but of admiring
the beauty of moral excellence: with fear and hope to warn and animate;
with joy and sorrow to solace and soften; with love to attach, with
sympathy to harmonize, with courage to attempt, with patience to endure,
and with the power of conscience, that faithful monitor within the
breast, to enforce the conclusions of reason, and direct and regulate
the passions of the soul. Truly we must pronounce him "majestic though
in ruin." "Happy, happy world," would be the exclamation of the
inhabitant of some other planet, on being told of a globe like ours,
peopled with such creatures as the