one cheap declamation more, is now a matter of trivial import, just fit to
give some show and exaggeration to the stale common-place, that ignorance
is likely to produce depravity, and that depravity and misery are likely
enough to go together. The pagans might be wretched enough; and perhaps
also the matter has been extravagantly magnified for the service of a
favorite theme, or to make a rhetorical show. At any rate, it is not now
worth while to go so far back to concern ourselves about it. The ancient
heathens had their day and their destiny, and it is of little importance
to us what they were or suffered."

It is fortunate, we may reply, to be "wiser than the ancients," without
the trouble of _learning_ anything by means of them. It is fortunate,
also, to have ascertained how much of all that ever existed can teach us
nothing. We have a signal improvement in the fashion of wisdom, when that
high endowment may be possessed as a thing distinct from compass of
thought, from study of causes and effects as illustrated on the great
scale, from aptitude to be instructed by the past, and from contemplation
of the divine government as carried over a wide extent of time. But indeed
this is not a privilege peculiar to this later day. In any former age
there were men in sufficient number who were wise enough to be indifferent
to all but immediate passing events, as knowing no lessons that persons
like them had to learn from remoter views, looking either into the past or
the future; who could even have before them the very monuments of awful
events that were gone by, without perceiving inscribed on them any
characters for contemplation to read. It is not impossible there might be
persons who could plan their schemes, and debate their questions, and even
follow their amusements, quite exempt from solemn reflections, within view
of the ruins of Jerusalem, after the Roman legions had left it and its
myriads of dead to silence. Any reference to that dreadful spectacle, as
an example of the consequences of the ignorance and wickedness of a