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.