While perhaps one or two, of better disposition, imperfectly descrying at
moments something true and important in what was said, and convinced of
the friendly intention of the speaker, might feel a transient regret for
what they would with honest shame call the stupidity of their own minds,
accompanied with some resentment against those to whose neglect it was
greatly attributable. The instructor also, as the signs grew evident to
him of the frustration of his efforts upon the invincible grossness of the
subjects before him, would become animated with indignation at the
incompetence or wicked neglect in the system and office of public
instruction, of which the intellectual condition of such a company of
persons might be taken as a proof and consequence. And in fact there is no
class more conspicuous in reprobation, in the solemn invectives of the
prophets, than those whose special and neglected duty it was to instruct
the Jewish people.

Now if such were the state of their intelligence, how would this friend of
truth and the people find, how would he have _expected_ to find, their
piety, their morals, and their happiness affected by such destitution of
knowledge? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? We are
supposing them to be in ignorance of four parts out of five, or perhaps of
nine parts out of ten, of what the Supreme Wisdom was maintaining an
extraordinary dispensation to declare to them. Why to declare, but because
each particular in this divine promulgation was pointed to some
circumstance, some propensity, some temptation, in their nature and
condition, and was exactly fitted to be there applied as a rectifier and
guard? The revelations and signs from heaven were the sum of what the
Perfect Intelligence judged indispensable to be sent forth from him to his
subjects, as seen by him liable to be wrong; and could there be one
dictate or fact superfluous in such a communication? If not, consider the
case of minds in which one, and a second, and the far greater number, of