their state of inestimable privilege is the result, under the blessing of
heaven, of the reception of information, of truth, into their minds.

If it were suggested to the well instructed in our companies to take an
account of the benefit they have received through the medium of knowledge,
they would say they do not know where to begin the long enumeration, or
how to bring into one estimate so ample a diversity of good. It might be
something like trying to specify, in brief terms, what a highly improved
portion of the ground, in a tract rude and sterile if left to itself, has
received from cultivation; an attempt which would carry back the
imagination through a progression of states and appearances, in which the
now fertile spots, and picture-like scenes, and commodious passes, and
pleasant habitations, may or must have existed in the advance from the
original rudeness. The estimate of what has ultimately been effected,
rises at each stage in this retrospect of the progress, in which so many
valuable changes and additions still require to be followed by something
more, to complete the scheme of improvement. In thus tracing backward the
condition of a now fair and productive place of human dwelling and
subsistence, it may easily be recollected, what a vast number of the
earth's inhabitants there are whose places of dwelling are in all those
states of worse cultivation and commodiousness, and what multitudes
leading a miserable and precarious life amidst the inhospitableness of the
waste, howling wilderness. Each presented circumstance of fertility or
shelter, salubrity or beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a much
greater number of the occupants of the world, than those to whom the
"lines are fallen in such pleasant places."

When, in like manner, a person richly possessed of the benefits imparted
by means of knowledge, finds, in attempting to recount them, that they
rise so fast on his view, in their variety, combinations, and gradations