Not but that it has been, in all nations and times, of infinite practical
service that there is involved in the constitution of the world a law by
which a coarse self-interest thus interposes to obstruct in a degree the
violent propensity to evil; for it has prevented, under Providence, more
actual mischief, beyond comparison more, than all other causes together.
The man inclined to perpetrate an iniquity, of the nature of a wrong to
his fellow-mortals, is apprized that he shall provoke a reaction, to
resist or punish him; that he shall incur as great an evil as that he is
disposed to do, or greater; that either a revenge regardless of all
formalities of justice will strike him, or a process instituted in
organized society will vindictively reach his property, liberty, or life.
This defensive array, of all men against all men, compels to remain shut
up within the mind an immensity of wickedness which is there burning to
come out into action. But for this, Noah's flood had been rendered
needless. But for this, our planet might have been accomplishing its
circles round the sun for thousands of years past without a human
inhabitant. Through the effect of this essential law, in the social
economy, it was possible for the race to subsist, notwithstanding all that
ignorance of the Divine Being, of heavenly truth, and of uncorrupt
morality, in which we are contemplating the heathen nations as benighted.
But while thus it prevented utter destruction, it had no corrective
operation on the depravity of the heart. It was not through a judgment of
things being essentially evil that they were forborne; it was not by the
power of conscience that wicked propensity was kept under restraint. It
was only by a hold on the meaner principles of his nature, that the
offender in will was arrested in prevention of the deed. And so the race
were such virtually, as they would have hastened to become actually, could
they have ceased to be afraid of one another's strength and retaliation.'
[Footnote: It is not very uncommon to hear credit given to human nature