comparatively short lapse of time suffices, to relieve them from anything
more than slight momentary reminiscences of what had struck them with such
painful force, and to restore, in regard to the general view of the
acknowledged misery of the human race, nearly the accustomed tranquillity.
The course of feeling resembles a listless stream of water, which, after
being dashed into commotion, by a massive substance flung into it, or by
its precipitation at a rapid, relapses, in the progress of a few fathoms
and a few moments, into its former sluggishness of current.

But is it well that this should be the state of feeling, in the immediate
presence of the spectacle exhibiting the people under a process of being
destroyed? There must be a great and criminal perversion from what our
nature ought to be, in a tranquillity to which it makes no material
difference whether they be destroyed or saved; a tranquillity which would
hardly, perhaps, have been awaked to an effort of intercession at the
portentous sign of destruction revealed to the sight of Ornan; or which
might at the deluge have permitted the privileged patriarch to sink in a
soft slumber, at the moment when the ark was felt to be moving from its
ground. If the original rectitude of that nature had been retained by any
individual, he would be confounded to conceive how creatures having their
lot cast in one place, so near together, so much alike, and under such a
complication of connections and dependences, can yet really be so
insulated, as that some of them may behold, with immovable composure,
innumerable companies of the rest in such a condition, that it had been
better for them not to have existed.

To such a condition a vast multitude have been consigned by "the lack of
knowledge." And we have to appeal concerning them to whatever there is of
benevolence and conscience, in those who deem themselves happy instances
of exemption from this deplorable consignment; and are conscious that