acknowledge it requires great and repeated efforts, to bring themselves to
such a contemplative realization of an important subject, that it shall
lay hold on the affections, though it should press on them, as in the
present instance, with facts and reflections of a nature the most strongly
appealing to a mournful sensibility.

That the "people are destroyed," is perceived to have the sound of a
lamentable declaration. But its import loses all force of significance in
falling on a state of feeling which, if resolvable into distinct
sentiments, would be expressed to some such effect as this:--that the
people's destruction, in whatever sense of the word, is, doubtless, a
deplorable thing, but quite a customary and ordinary matter, the
prevailing fact, indeed, in the general state of this world; that, in
truth, it would seem as if they were made but to be destroyed, for that
they have constantly been, in all imaginable ways, the subjects of
destruction; that, subjected in common with all living corporeal beings to
the doom of death, and to a fearful diversity of causes tending to inflict
it, they have also appeared, through their long sad history, consigned to
a spiritual and moral destruction, if that term be applicable to a
condition the reverse of wisdom, goodness, and happiness; that, in short,
such a sentence as that cited from the prophet, is too merely an
expression of what has been always and over the whole world self-evident,
to excite any particular attention or emotion.

Thus the destruction, in every sense of the word, of human creatures, is
so constantly obvious, as mingled and spread throughout the whole system,
that the mind has been insensibly wrought to that protective obtuseness
which (like the thickness of the natural clothing of animals in rigorous
climates) we acquire in defence of our own ease, against the aggrievance
of things which inevitably continue in our presence. An instinctive policy