If I, he may thus
argue, who exercise my own mind, and have been refined by
tribulation, find the serpent's egg in some fold of my heart, and
crush it with difficulty, shall not I pity those who are stamped
with less vigour, or who have heedlessly nurtured the insidious
reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it sucked? Can I,
conscious of my secret sins, throw off my fellow creatures, and
calmly see them drop into the chasm of perdition, that yawns to
receive them. No! no! The agonized heart will cry with
suffocating impatience--I too am a man! and have vices, hid,
perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the dust before God, and
loudly tell me when all is mute, that we are formed of the same
earth, and breathe the same element. Humanity thus rises naturally
out of humility, and twists the cords of love that in various
convolutions entangle the heart.
This sympathy extends still further, till a man well pleased
observes force in arguments that do not carry conviction to his own
bosom, and he gladly places in the fairest light to himself, the
shows of reason that have led others astray, rejoiced to find some
reason in all the errors of man; though before convinced that he
who rules the day makes his sun to shine on all. Yet, shaking
hands thus, as it were, with corruption, one foot on earth, the
other with bold strides mounts to heaven, and claims kindred with
superiour natures.
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