a Messiah was to come. For on that supposition they might have regarded
him as a most striking phenomenon, with curiosity and admiration, with
awe of his miraculous powers, and as little prejudice as it is possible
in any case for depravity and ignorance to feel toward sanctity and
wisdom. But this delusive pre-occupation of their minds formed a direct
grand cause for their rejecting Jesus Christ. And how fearful was the
final consequence of _this_ "lack of knowledge!" How truly, in all
senses, the people were destroyed! The violent extermination at length of
multitudes of them from the earth, was but as the omen and commencement
of a deeper perdition. And the terrible memorial is a perpetual
admonition what a curse it is _not to know_. For He, by the rejection of
whom these despisers devoted themselves to perish, while he looked on
their great city, and wept at the doom which he beheld impending, said,
_If_ them hadst _known_, even thou in this thy day.----

So much for that selected people:--we may cast a glance over the rest of
the ancient world, as exemplifying the pernicious effect of the want of
knowledge.

The ignorance which pervaded the heathen nations, was fully equal to the
utmost result that could have been calculated from all the causes
contributing to thicken the mental darkness. The traditional glimmering of
that knowledge which had been originally received by divine communication,
had long since become nearly extinct, having gone out in the act, as it
were, of lighting up certain fantastic inventions of doctrine, by ignition
of an element exhaled from the corruptions of the human soul. In other
words, the primary truths, imparted by the Creator to the early
inhabitants of the earth, gradually losing their clearness and purity, had
passed, by a transition through some delusive analogies, into the vanities
of fancy and notion which sprang from the inventive depravity of man;