Section I.



It may excite in us some sense of wonder, and perhaps of self-reproach, to
reflect with what a stillness and indifference of the mind we can hear and
repeat sentences asserting facts which are awful calamities. And this
indifference is more than the accidental and transient state, which might
prevail at seasons of peculiar heaviness or languor. The self-inspector
will often be compelled to acknowledge it as a symptom and exemplification
of the _habit_ of his mind, that ideas of extensive misery and
destruction, though expressed in the plainest, strongest language, seem to
come with but a faint glimmer on his apprehension, and die away without
awakening one emotion of that sensibility which so many comparatively
trifling causes can bring into exercise.

Will the hearers of the sentence just now repeated from the sacred book,
give a moment's attention to the effect it has on them? We might suppose
them accosted with the question, Would you find it difficult to say what
idea, or whether anything distinct enough to deserve the name of an idea,
has been impressed by the sound of words bearing so melancholy a
significance? And would you have to confess, that they excite no interest
which would not instantly give place to that of the smallest of your own
concerns, occurring to your thoughts; or would not leave free the tendency
to wander loose among casual fancies; or would not yield to feelings of
the ludicrous, at the sight of any whimsical incident? It would not
probably be unfair to suspect such faintness of apprehension, and such
unfixedness and indifference of thought, in the majority of any large
number of persons, though drawn together ostensibly to attend to matters
of gravest concern. And perhaps many of the most serious of them would