notions. You would not for the wealth of an empire consent to descend,
were it possible, from the comparative elevation to which you have been
raised by means of knowledge, into melancholy region of spirits abandoned
to ignorance.

But in this situation have the mass of the people been, from the time of
the prophet whose words we have cited, down to this hour.

The prophets had their exalted privilege of dwelling amidst the
illuminations of heaven effectually countervailed, as to any elation of
feeling it might have imparted, by the grief of beholding the daily
spectacle of the grossest manifestations and mischiefs of ignorance among
the people, for the very purpose of whose exemption from that ignorance it
was that they bore the sacred office. One of the most striking of the
characteristics by which their writings so forcibly seize the imagination
is, a strange continual fluctuation and strife of lustre and gloom,
produced by the intermingling and contrast of the emanations from the
Spirit of infinite wisdom, with those proceeding from the dark, debased
souls of the people. We are tempted to pronounce that nation not only the
most perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid of all human tribes.
The revealed law of God in the midst of them; the prophets and other
organs of oracular communication; religious ordinances and emblems; facts,
made and expressly intended to embody truths, in long and various series;
the whole system of their superhuman government, constituted as a
school--all these were ineffectual to create so much just thought in their
minds, as to save them from the vainest and the vilest delusions and
superstitions.

But, indeed, this very circumstance, that knowledge shone on them from Him
who knows all things, may in part account for an intellectual perverseness