tTi.-i'' 
 
 
 •>-r ■■,- ■ 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.arcliive.org/details/essayofevilsofpoOOfostricli 
 
^i 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 EVILS OF POPULAR IGNORANCE, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 iff 
 
AN 
 
 ESSAY .0^ 
 
 ■.^^«,^,._. 
 
 THE EVILS OF 
 
 POPULAR IGNORANCE: 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 COMMUNICATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE 
 PEOPLE OF HINDOOSTAN. 
 
 BY JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HOLDSWORTH AND BALL, 
 
 AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1884. 
 
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD-STUEET-HILL. 
 
re 
 
 83f 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 If the circumstance of a manner of introduc- 
 tion somewhat different from what would be 
 expected in a composition of the essay class 
 were worth a very few words of explanation, it 
 might be mentioned, that the following produc- 
 tion has grown out of the topics of a discourse, 
 delivered at a public anniversary meeting in aid 
 of the British and Foreign School Society. 
 
 When it was thought, a good while after that 
 occasion, that a more extensive use might be 
 made of some of the observations, the writing 
 was begun in the form of a Discourse addressed 
 to an assembly, and commencing with a sentence 
 from the bible, to serve as a general indication 
 of the subject. But after some progress had 
 been made, it became evident that any thing 
 like a comprehensive view of that subject would 
 be incompatible with the proper limits of such a 
 composition. 
 
 In relinquishing, however, the form of a pubHc 
 address, the writer thought he might be excused 
 
 h 
 
VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 for leaving some traces of that character, in both 
 the cast of expression and the theological senti- 
 ment, to remain ; for reverting repeatedly to the 
 sentence from scripture ; and for continuing the 
 use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for 
 the modest egotism of public discoursers. 
 
 In the general design and course of observa- 
 tions, the essay retains the character of the 
 original discourse, which was, in accordance to 
 the presumed expectations of a grave assembly 
 in a place of worship, an attempt to display the 
 importance of the education of the people in 
 reference, mainly, to moral and religious inter- 
 ests. There are special relations in which 
 their ignorance or cultivation are of great con- 
 sequence to the welfare of the community. 
 Some of these are of indispensable consideration 
 to the legislator, some to the political economist. 
 But it is in that general and moral view, in 
 which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld 
 the cause of their vice, irreligion, and conse- 
 quent misery, that the subject is attempted, 
 imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be 
 illustrated in the following pages. 
 
 Nor was it within the writer's design to sug- 
 gest any particular plans, regulations, or instru- 
 mental expedients, in promotion of the system 
 of operations hopefully begun, for raising these 
 classes from their degradation. His part has 
 been to make such a prominent representation 
 of the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 
 
 shall prove it an aggravated national guilt to 
 allow another generation to grow up to the 
 same condition as the present and the past. 
 In the course of attempting this, occasions have 
 been seized of exposing the absurdity of those 
 who are hostile to the mental improvement of 
 the people. If any one should say that this is a 
 mere beating of the air, for that all such hostility 
 is now gone by, he may be assured there are 
 many persons, of no insignificant rank in society, 
 who would from their own consciousness smile 
 at the simplicity with which he can so easily 
 shape men's opinions and dispositions to his 
 mind whether they will or not. He must have 
 been the most charitable or the most obtuse of 
 observers. 
 
 It is feared the readers of the following essay 
 will find some defect of distribution and arrange- 
 ment. To the candour of those who are prac- 
 tised in literary work it would be an admissible 
 plea, that when, in a preparation to meet a 
 particular occasion for which but little time has 
 been allowed, a series of topics and observations 
 has been hastily sketched out, it is far from 
 easy to throw them afterwards into a different 
 order and connexion. The author has to bespeak 
 indulgence also, here and there, to something 
 too like repetition. If he qualifies the terms in 
 which this fault is acknowledged, it is because 
 he thinks that, though there be a recurrence of 
 similarities, a mere bare iteration is avoided, by 
 
 b2 
 
Vlll ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 means of a diversity and addition of the matter 
 of illustration and enforcement. 
 
 Any benevolent vs^riter on the subject would 
 v^ish he could treat it v^ithout such frequent use 
 of the phrases, " lower orders/' " subordinate 
 classes/' " inferior portion of society/' and other 
 expressions of the same kind ; because they have 
 an invidious sound, and have indeed very often 
 been used in contempt. He can only say, that 
 he uses them with no such feeling ; that they 
 are employed simply as the most obvious terms 
 of designation ; and that he would like better to 
 employ any less ungracious ones that did not 
 require an affected circumlocution. 
 
 In several parts of the essay, there will be 
 found a J-nguage of emphatic censure on that 
 condu^ i states, that predominant spirit and 
 system in the administration of the affairs of 
 nations, by which the people have been con- 
 signed to such a deplorable condition of intel- 
 lectual and consequently moral degradation, 
 while resources approaching to immensity have 
 been lavished on objects chosen in preference to 
 its amendment. So far from feeling that such 
 observations can require any apology, the writer 
 thinks it is high time for all the advocates of 
 intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, 
 to raise a protesting voice against that policy 
 of the states denominated Christian, and espe- 
 cially our own, which has, through age after 
 age, found every conceivable thing necessary to 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. IX 
 
 be done, at all costs and hazards, rather than to 
 enlighten, reform, and refine the people. He 
 thinks that nothing can more strongly betray 
 a judgment enslaved, or a time-serving dis- 
 honesty, in those who would assume to dictate 
 to such an advocate and to censure him, than 
 that sort of doctrine which tells him that it is 
 beside his business, and out of his sphere, as 
 a christian moralist, to animadvert on the con- 
 duct of national authorities, when he sees them, 
 during one long period of time after another, not 
 doing that which is the most important of all 
 things to be done for the people over whom 
 they preside, but doing what is in substance and 
 effect the reverse ; and doing it on that great 
 scale, which contrasts so fearfully with the small 
 one on which the individuals who deplore such 
 perversion of power are confined to attempt a 
 remedy of the consequences. 
 
 This interdiction comes with its worst appear- 
 ance, when it is put forth in terms affecting 
 a profound reverence of religion ; a reverence 
 which cannot endure that so holy a thing should 
 be defiled, by being brought in any contact with 
 such a subject as the disastrous effect of bad 
 government on the intellectual and moral state 
 of the people. The advocate of schemes for 
 the improvement of their rational nature may, it 
 seems, take his ground, his strongest ground, on 
 religion, for enforcing on individuals the duty of 
 promoting such an object. In the name and 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 authority of religion he may press on their con- 
 sciences with respect to the application of their 
 property and influence ; and he may adopt under 
 its sanction a strongly judicial language in censure 
 of their negligence, their insensibility to their 
 accountableness, and their lavish expenditures 
 foreign to the most important uses : in all this he 
 does well. But the instant he begins to make the 
 like judicial application of its laws to the public 
 conduct of the governing authorities, that instant 
 he debases Christianity to politics, most likely to 
 party-politics ; and a pious horror is affected at 
 the profanation. Christianity is to be honoured 
 somewhat after the same manner as the Lama 
 of Thibet. It is to stay in its temple, to have 
 the proprieties of homage duly preserved within 
 its precincts, but to be exempted (in reverence of 
 its sanctity !) from all cognisance of great pubhc 
 affairs, even in the points where they most 
 involve its interests. It could show, perhaps, in 
 what manner the administration of those affairs 
 injures these interests ; but it would degrade its 
 sacred character by talking of any such matter. 
 But Christianity must have leave to decline the 
 sinister compliment of such pretended anxiety to 
 preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred cha- 
 racter, it can venture that, on the strength of its 
 intrinsic quality and of its own guardianship, 
 while, regardless of the artificial limits thus 
 attempted in mock reverence to be prescribed 
 to it, it steps in a censorial capacity on what 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XI 
 
 will be called a political ground, so far as to 
 take account of what concern has been shown, 
 or what means have been left disposable, for 
 operations to promote the grand essentials of 
 human welfare, by that pubhc system which has 
 grasped and expended the strength of the com- 
 munity. Christianity is not so demure a thing 
 that it cannot, without violating its consecrated 
 character, go into the exercise of this judicial 
 office. And as" to its right to do so, — either it 
 has a right to take cognisance now of the man- 
 ner in which the spirit and measures of states 
 and their regulators bear upon the most momen- 
 tous interests, or it will have no right to be 
 brought forward as the supreme law for the 
 final award upon those proceedings and those 
 men.* 
 
 A great national plan for the Education of 
 the lower classes, expected to come shortly 
 before the Legislature, might have seemed to 
 announce that a far better order of things than 
 
 * A censure on this alleged desecration of religious topics, 
 which had been pronounced on the Essay (first edit.) by a 
 Review making no small pretensions both religious and lite- 
 rary, was the immediate cause that prompted these observations. 
 But they were made with a general reference to a hypocritical 
 cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it was 
 hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circumstance, 
 that those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by im- 
 plicating it with political affairs, smote exclusively on one side. 
 Let the religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion 
 as largely as he pleased with the proper sort of political senti- 
 ments, that is, the Servile, and then it was all right. 
 
Xll ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 that described in the following essay, was on 
 the point of commencing. No one would be 
 more pleased than the writer, that any of its 
 representations and remonstrances should be- 
 come obsolete almost before they are heard. 
 The luminous and comprehensive mind of the 
 Mover of this important measure, the indepen- 
 dent spirit of his speculations, his contempt of 
 old prejudices, his hostility to all dwarfish, re- 
 strictive, and antiquated systems of policy, and 
 his admirable exertions and success in exposing 
 the iniquitous management under which a mul- 
 titude of institutions for education had become 
 worse than useless, seemed to give a certain 
 pledge that any plan which he would propose 
 could not fail to be a model of liberality and 
 equity. It must have been from some widely 
 different quarter that we could have expected a 
 scheme framed in conformity to those very pre- 
 judices, those invidious distinctions in the com- 
 munity, those principles of exclusive privilege 
 and unequal advantage, of which it had not 
 been supposed there could be a more deter- 
 mined enemy. And if the frame and substance 
 of such a scheme appeared in striking contra- 
 riety to its Author's long avowed and proclaimed 
 principles, the mode devised for ensuring its 
 pure and effectual operation seemed to present 
 as signal a contrast with his reputed high-toned 
 pride. It was most surprising that, for a due 
 exercise of supervision, he should submit to the 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. Xlll 
 
 humiliation of proposing — not any mode of 
 placing the schools under free public inspection, 
 not any adjustment for subjecting them to the 
 vigilance of the respectable inhabitants of the 
 neighbourhood, who must naturally be most 
 interested for their right management, not any 
 method, in short, which experience had proved to 
 be beneficial — but an appointment of very much 
 the same nature as that of which he had himself 
 just rendered the utter inefficiency so notorious. 
 To complete the conjunction of remarkable 
 circumstances, this scheme, which takes for its 
 very basis an invidious distinction ; which must 
 bring more frequently and offensively into view, 
 with an increased activity of the attendant and 
 inevitable feelings, all the ungracious circum- 
 stances already existing in the relative state of 
 two great portions of the nation ; and which 
 creates a new set . of disabilities, which the pri- 
 vileged portion will be sure to consider as 
 conferring on them another mark of honour- 
 able superiority, and an advantage gained 
 against an enemy, — this scheme is brought for- 
 ward precisely and critically at the moment 
 when the Legislature is projecting a great mea- 
 sure of liberal justice for abolishing the dis- 
 abihties and disadvantageous distinctions of the 
 Roman Catholics. It will be a highly curious 
 fact in our history, if the very same month 
 should be recorded as the time when the very 
 Sjame Legislature annihilated what had been 
 
XIV ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 regarded as marks of dishonour to the adherents 
 of the popish rehgion, and affixed additional ones 
 on the protestant dissenters. 
 
 The proposal of such a scheme from such 
 an Author, strange as it seems, must have its 
 possible explanation. Let him, or any leading 
 supporter of the measure, (who is at the same 
 time an advocate of liberal principles,) disdain- 
 ing the unavailing sophistry of an attempt to 
 throw a deceptive semblance over the project, 
 make a plain manly declaration of the predica- 
 ment in which they find the matter to stand, 
 though it were to be in terms like these : — that 
 because the state of the people with respect to 
 education is so bad, it is thought urgently neces- 
 sary that in a national form something should 
 be done for the removal of so great an evil ; but 
 because the old prejudices and jealousies, the 
 spirit of domination and exclusion, the antipa- 
 thies of bigotry, are found unmitigated in the 
 nineteenth century, it were in vain to think of 
 obtaining acquiescence in a liberal project ; and 
 therefore a very exceptionable one is offered, 
 with the only recommendation that it may be 
 better than nothing. In England we are to be 
 content that in an institution for popular edu- 
 cation, that equal ground should be refused to 
 dissenters which some popish states on the con- 
 tinent are freely allowing the protestants. 
 
 The end of a preface cannot be the place 
 for discussing the subject. Nor is there any 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XV 
 
 need, after a number of well-informed writers 
 have plainly exposed the evils in the constitution 
 of the plan, the certain and the threatened evils 
 in its operation, and the probability that it would 
 substantially fail of its object. That it is framed 
 in violation of liberal theory, ought to be, with- 
 out descending to particulars, a sufficient con- 
 demnation of any project, in a country and age 
 pretending to be enlightened. It is quite enough 
 to suffer the continuance of old institutions 
 founded on an order of arbitrary distinctions and 
 exclusions. That new ones should be framed 
 on the same principles, yet professedly for the 
 general good, and empowered to exact support 
 indiscriminately from all, is to be protested 
 against by every liberal mind. But the opposers 
 of the measure in question have insisted much 
 less on this general and theoretical objection, 
 than on those made in anticipation of its prac- 
 tical consequences. They plead that the insti- 
 tution would have the effect of breaking up a 
 multitude of schools already in existence for the 
 children of the poor ; that it would diminish the 
 means of instruction to some numerous classes 
 of them ; that it seems to recognise the prin- 
 ciple, in a country not Mahomedan, that the 
 minds of females are not worth instruction ; 
 that it would infalHbly occasion numberless 
 petty grievances, and many serious injuries, to 
 the poor persons not attending the established 
 worship — grievances and injuries for which there 
 
Xyi ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 would be little hope of redress ; that in its 
 appointments it would involve a great deal of 
 partiahty and servility ; that it would either 
 repress the benevolent gratuitous activity of a 
 great number of labourers in the instruction of 
 the people, or load the continuance of their 
 labours with a heavy tax ; and that the expense 
 to the nation, in a season of great distress, 
 would be enormous, — to which consideration let 
 it be added, that there appears no manner of 
 hope that any other national expense would be 
 diminished i?i order to furnish resources for this 
 plan. In various parts of the following essay it 
 is represented how easily the great disposers of 
 the public means might have provided the expe- 
 dients for improving the education of the people; 
 but this is always on the supposition that they 
 did not expend the public means without limit 
 on very different objects. 
 
 March, 1821. 
 
 It is no wonder that the project commented 
 on in the preceding pages should have suddenly 
 fallen to the ground. If there had been among 
 dissenters but half that superfluity of narrow 
 bigotry, jealous pride, and self-interest of party, 
 which had always been imputed to them, that 
 had been enough to rouse them in opposition. 
 But no great excess of these qualities was 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XVU 
 
 requisite to make them think it plainly a violation 
 of equity that a very large, rapidly-increasing, 
 and active proportion of such part of the nation 
 as cared about the popular education at all, 
 should be called on to submit their share of 
 the important concern to the control, (what 
 they knew^ vi^ould soon v^ork itself into the 
 absolute control,) of a class from w^hose con- 
 nexion and institutions they had separated 
 on principle. They exceedingly regretted the 
 frustration of so beneficent an intention ; they 
 regretted therefore that, of the proposed scheme 
 for its accompUshment, they could not help 
 seeing in the construction so much that was 
 unequitable, and foreseeing in the operation 
 so much that would be annoying, that they 
 could do no less than unite in a strong declara- 
 tion against the project. They must have 
 strangely misjudged the circumstances of their 
 relative position, have profited little by their own 
 and their ancestors' experience, and been very 
 dull in prognostication, if it had not been in 
 vain to tell them that the grievances they appre- 
 hended were but imaginary; or would be ex- 
 tremely slight if they could but have the sense 
 and liberality to practise a little friendly accom- 
 modation, a little civility of deference, a mere 
 trifle of self-denial, — virtues and practices which 
 they, of the two great divisions of the commu- 
 nity, were deemed the most worthy to be taught 
 on the occasion. :< i j£i!> 
 
XVm ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 All legislative consideration of the subject 
 went into abeyance ; and has so remained 
 through an interval in which a million, or 
 perhaps far more, in England alone, of the 
 children who were at that time within that space 
 of their life on which chiefly a general scheme 
 would have acted, have grown up to animal 
 maturity, destitute of all that even the lowest 
 decency could call education. But the subject 
 is now at last forcing itself on attention, with 
 such a peremptory demand as can no longer be 
 trifled with, as peremptory as ever was the 
 necessity of an embankment against the peril of 
 inundation. Some grand comprehensive measure 
 is absolutely necessary as a fortified line between 
 us and — not national dishonour; that is flagrantly 
 upon us, but — the destruction of national safety. 
 
 As to national dishonour, by comparison with 
 what may be seen elsewhere, it is hardly possible 
 for a patriot to feel a more bitter mortification 
 than in reading the description, as recently given 
 by M. Cousin, of the state of education in the 
 Prussian dominions, and then looking over the 
 hideous exhibition of ignorance and barbarism 
 in this country ; in representing to himself the 
 vernal intelligence, (as we may rightly name 
 it,) the information, the sense of decorum, the 
 fitness for rational converse, which must quite 
 inevitably difiuse a value and a grace through 
 the general youthful character under such a 
 discipline, and then changing his view to what 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XIX 
 
 may be seen all over his own country ; an 
 incalculable and ever-increasing tribe of human 
 creatures, growing up in a condition which 
 could not have been much exceeded if there 
 had been for them a national institution for the 
 preservation of ignorance, and the cultivation of 
 every thing base, impudent, and pernicious to 
 society. Any one who shall deny this to be a 
 true description can have seen little of what we 
 call the rising generation of the lower classes. 
 
 When neither opprobrium, nor prospective 
 policy, nor sense of duty, can constrain the 
 attention of the legislature to an important 
 interest of the community, it is sure to come on 
 them at last in some more alarming form of 
 manifestation and compulsion. And most for- 
 tunate it is if, against such a juncture, there 
 should have come into power an order of men 
 who, besides being excited by this alarm, are 
 disposed by their deliberate principles to do 
 justice to that interest. Between these two 
 causes cooperating, we may now reckon on it 
 with confidence, that henceforward this great 
 affair will unceasingly occupy the serious atten- 
 tion of the government ; till it shall be brought 
 by degrees into some such practical order as 
 shall redeem us at length from the ignominy, 
 the national infamy, of exhibiting to the world, 
 in the nineteenth century, a rude, reckless, 
 vicious, semi-barbarous populace. 
 
 But when we say, by degrees, we are fearful 
 
XX ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 that the process may be slow, though at some 
 pace or other it will certainly go on. The dif- 
 ficulties in the way would be formidable, what- 
 ever might be the energy exerted, were they 
 even no other than the obstacles created by the 
 inveterate debasement of the people themselves. 
 But we are told, besides, of we know not what 
 obstruction to be encountered from prejudices 
 of prescription, venerable institutions, ascendent 
 authorities, and privileged and peculiar interests, 
 which would quash any project of a general 
 education, to be carried into execution by the 
 enactment and power of the state. If this mean 
 that the old horror, or affectation of horror, of 
 a bold experimental novelty, is still to be yielded 
 to ; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be 
 ventured but in a creeping inch-by-inch move- 
 ment ; that the reign of gross ignorance, be- 
 coming, as we see it does, progressively more 
 and more demoralized, is to be allowed a very 
 leisurely retreat, retaining its hold on a large 
 portion of the present and several following 
 generations of the children, and therefore the 
 adults ; that their condition and fate shall con- 
 tinue to be mainly left at the discretion of 
 ignorant and often worthless parents ; that there 
 shall be little or nothing done but what is volun- 
 tary, on the part both of those who promote 
 the design and those who are to be benefited 
 by it ; that, in short, there shall not be a com- 
 prehensive application of the national power. 
 
ADYLRTISEMFNT. XXI 
 
 through its organ, the government, by authori- 
 tative and compulsory measures, to abate as 
 speedily as possible the dreadful national nui- 
 sance of such a condition of the juvenile facul- 
 ties and habits as we now see glaring around 
 us ; — if this be what is meant, we may well ask 
 whether those venerable institutions, privileged 
 orders, rights of prescription, or whatever they 
 are called, that would thus interfere to render 
 feeble, partial, and slow, any intended exertion 
 to rescue the nation from barbarism, turpitude, 
 and danger, be not themselves among the most 
 noxious things in the land, and the most de- 
 serving to be extirpated. 
 
 We do, however, greatly fear that, while the 
 legislature acknowledges, as it soon will, that 
 something absolutely must be done, any scheme 
 proposed in the first instance will be far from 
 comprehensive in its compass, will be too inde- 
 cisive in its enforcement, and rather niggardly 
 in its pecuniary appointments. Many of our 
 legislators have never thought of investigating 
 the condition of the people, and are unaware 
 of their deplorable destitution of all mental 
 cultivation ; many may have formed but a low 
 and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure 
 of cultivation desirable to be imparted ; and as 
 to those of highest authority in our national 
 affairs, we fear there is reason to apprehend a 
 deficiency of the resolution and energy requisite 
 for carrying into effect what they might in 
 
XXll ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 theory approve. But we will look forward to 
 a time, we hope not very far off, when the 
 reforming spirit shall have come to be com- 
 prehensive in its scope, and confident in its 
 strength ; and will trust that then a patriotic 
 government will apply its power to accomplish 
 that reform, without which all the rest will be 
 of little value, by the effectual enactment of 
 measures which, though they should be of less 
 technical organization, and executed with some- 
 what less rigour of official interference, than 
 those adopted in Prussia and France, shall no 
 longer leave us exposed, in most opprobrious 
 contrast, with the actual state of the one of 
 those nations, and with that which the other is 
 entering on a course to attain. 
 
 Little needs to be said about this new edition 
 of the following Essay, beyond a word or two 
 in respect to one part of it, in the way of 
 excuse for leaving unaltered a certain cast of 
 sentiment, for which the change of the times 
 has partly taken away the cause. At the date 
 of the former edition, and for years afterward, 
 there was nothing in the state and prospects of 
 the nation to promise, within any conjecturable 
 period, any such political changes as should 
 be favourable to measures for reforming the 
 wretched mental and moral condition of the 
 people, or indeed to any care at all about 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XXIII 
 
 the matter. In the absence of all good omens 
 from that quarter, the writer endeavoured, in 
 the part which went into the language of ex- 
 hortation, to excite the zeal and activity of 
 individuals and voluntary associations, by ad- 
 monitions of duty, animated by reasons for 
 confidence that the cooperation of such minor 
 efforts, if multiplied over the land, might avail, 
 in time, to produce a sensible modification in 
 the character of the people. It was an endea- 
 vour to set forth in the most favourable light, 
 or, as we say, to make the most of, the possi- 
 bilities which existed though the state should 
 continue neglectful of its greatest duty. 
 
 Why retain a sort of argument and inculca- 
 tion suited to the then state of things, now that 
 there is a new aspect of affairs? The answer 
 may be, that this change, though it does relieve 
 the hopelessness of a more powerful interven- 
 tion, is not such as to afford or to promise an 
 exemption to individuals from the claim for a 
 continuance, yet a long time to come, of their 
 unabated exertions ; that it is quite certain the 
 government will, as yet, save them but the 
 inferior share of this any more than of other 
 duties exacted ; that therefore many of the 
 motives urged at a former period are still in 
 force ; and that the confidence that some im- 
 portant measure or other will be adopted by 
 the government should rather stimulate than 
 relax their useful activity. The incitements to 
 
XXIV ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 exertion which, as lately as a dozen years since, 
 could only, in giving an assurance of some very 
 confined success, present a consolation under 
 the despair of any stronger agency coming into 
 the service, may nov7 be read in the more 
 pleasing character of encouragements to ad- 
 vance with spirit, in the expectation of falhng 
 in, after a while, with the designs and operations 
 of a powerful ally. — At any rate they may be 
 left to stand as monumental of the forlorn state 
 of feeling which, as to any good on the great 
 scale, the truest patriots were condemned to at 
 so comparatively recent a period. 
 
 , For the rest of what may be worth saying 
 about the new edition ; literary correction, and 
 not either enlargement or material change, has 
 been the object in this final revisal. The little 
 that is added is dispersed through the volume, 
 in attempts, here and there, to bring out the 
 ideas more fully, or with some little after- 
 thought of discrimination or exception. For 
 the purpose of compression there are divers 
 erasures of words or clauses. In some instances 
 the connexion and dependence of the series of 
 thoughts may have been rendered more obvious ; 
 and the sentences reduced to a somewhat more 
 simple and compact construction. 
 
 January, 1834. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Defect of sensibility in the view of the imhappiness of mankind. — 
 Ignorance one grand cause of that unhappiness. — Ignorance pre- 
 valent among the ancient Jewish people. — Its injurious operation — 
 and ultimately destructive consequence. — More extended con- 
 sideration of ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient 
 heathens p. 1 — 51. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent 
 to those of ancient history. — State of the popular mind in Christen- 
 dom during the complete reign of Popery. — Supposed reflections 
 of a Protestant in one of our ancient splendid structures for eccle- 
 siastical use. — Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on 
 the* understandings of the people. — Their barbarous ignorance 
 even in the time of Elizabeth, notwithstanding the intellectual and 
 literary glories of this country in that period. — Sunk in ignorance 
 still in the boasted age of Addison, Pope, &c. — Strange insen- 
 sibility of the cultivated part of the nation with regard to the 
 mental and moral condition of the rest. — Almost heathen igno- 
 rance of Religion at the time when Whitefield and Wesley began 
 to excite the attention of the multitude to that subject. — Signs 
 and means of a change for the better in recent times . p. 52 — 115 
 
XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of 
 the popular character. — Entire want, in early life, of any idea of 
 a general and comprehensive purpose to be pursued. — Gratification 
 of the senses the chief good. — Cruelty a subsidiary resource. — 
 Disposition to cruelty displayed and confirmed by common prac- 
 tices. — Confirmed especially by the manner of slaughtering animals 
 destined for food. — Displayed in the abuse of the labouring ani- 
 mals. — General characteristic of the people an indistinct and faint 
 sense of right and wrong. — Various exemplifications. — Dishonour 
 to our country that the people should have remained in such a 
 condition. — Effects of their ignorance as appearing in several parts 
 of the economy of life ; in their ordinary occupations ; in their 
 manner of spending their leisure time, including the Sunday ; in 
 the state of domestic society ; consequences of this last as seen in 
 the old age of parents. — The lower classes placed by their want of 
 education out of amicable communication with the higher. — Un- 
 happy and dangerous consequences of this. — Great decline of the 
 respect which in former times the people felt toward the higher 
 classes and the existing order of the community. — Progress of a 
 contrary spirit p. 116 — 196. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence 
 among the people would render them unfit for their station, and 
 discontented with it; would excite them to insubordination and 
 arrogance toward their superiors ; and make them the more liable 
 to be seduced by the wild notions and pernicious machinations of 
 declaimers, schemers, and innovators. — Observations in answer. — 
 Special and striking absurdity of this objection in one important 
 particular. — Evidence from matter of fact that the improvement of 
 the popular understanding has not the tendency alleged. — The 
 special regard meant to be had to religious instruction in the educa- 
 tion desired for the lower classes, a security against their increased 
 knowledge being perverted into an excitement to insubordination 
 and disorder. — Absurdity of the notion that an improved education 
 of the common people ought to consist of instruction specifically 
 and almost solely religious. — The diminutive quantity of religious 
 as well as other knowledge, to which the people would be limited 
 by some zealous advocates of order and subordination, utterly 
 inadequate to secure those objects. — But, question what is to be 
 luiderstood by order and subordination. — Increased knowledge 
 and sense in the people certainly uot favourable to a credulous 
 
CONTENTS. XXVll 
 
 confidence and a passive unconditional submission, on their part, 
 toward the presiding classes in the community. — Advantage, to a 
 wise and upright government, of having intelligent subjects. — Great 
 effect which a general improvement among the people would ne- 
 cessarily have on the manner of their being governed. — The people 
 arrived, in this age, at a state which renders it impracticable to 
 preserve national tranquillity without improving their minds and 
 making some concessions to their claims. — Folly and probable 
 calamity of an obstinate resolution to maintain subordination in 
 the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and despotic manner of 
 former times. — Facility and certain success of a better system 
 
 p. 197—239 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Extreme poverty of Religious Knowledge among the uneducated 
 people : Their notions respecting God, Providence, Jesus Christ, 
 the invisible world. — Fatal effect of their want of mental discipline 
 as causing an inaptitude to receive religious information. — Exem- 
 plifications, — in a supposed experiment of religious instruction in 
 a friendly visit to a numerous uneducated family ; in the stupidity 
 and thoughtlessness often betrayed in attendance on public religious 
 services ; in the impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any 
 degree of clearness, to ignorant persons when alarmed into some 
 serious concern by sickness; in the insensibility and invincible 
 delusion sometimes retained in the near approach to death. — Rare 
 instances of the admirable efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge 
 the faculties, even in the old age of an ignorant man. — Excuses 
 for the intellectual inaptitude and perversion of uncultivated re- 
 ligious minds. — Animadversions on religious teachers • -p. 240 — 281 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Supposed method of verifying the preceding representation of the 
 ignorance of the people. — Renewed expressions of wonder and 
 mortification that this should be the true description of the English 
 nation. — Prodigious exertions of this nation for the accomplish- 
 ment of objects foreign to the improvement of the people. — Effects 
 which might have resulted from far less exertion and resource ap- 
 plied to that object. — The contrast between what has been done 
 and what might have been done, by the exertion of the national 
 strength, exposed in a series of parallel representations. — Total 
 unconcern, till a recent period, of the generality of persons in the 
 higher classes, respecting the mental state of the populace. — Indi- 
 cations of an important change in the manner of estimating them. — 
 
XXVlll CONTENTS. 
 
 Measures attempted and projected for their improvement.— Some 
 of these measures and methods insignificant in the esteem of pro- 
 jectors of merely political schemes for the amendment of the popular 
 condition. — But questions to those projectors on the efficacy of such 
 schemes. — Most desirable, nevertheless, that the political systems 
 and the governing powers of states could be converted to promote 
 so grand a purpose. — But expostulations addressed to those who, 
 desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object itself — In- 
 citement to individual exertion. — Reference to the sublimest 
 Example. — Imputation of extravagant hope. — Repelled ; first, by 
 a full acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded pro- 
 jectors of improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder 
 in the essential constitution of our nature ; and next, by a plain 
 statement, in a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge 
 it rational to expect from a general extension of good education. — 
 Answer to the question, whether it be presumed that any merely 
 human discipline can reduce its subjects under the predominance 
 of religion — Answer to the inquiry, what is the extent of the 
 knowledge of which it is desired to put the common people in pos- 
 session. — Observations on supposed degrees of possible advancement 
 of the knowledge and welfare of the community ; with reflections 
 of astonishment and regret at the actual state of ignorance, degra- 
 dation, and wretchedness, after so many thousand years have passed 
 away. — Congratulatory notice of those worthy individuals who 
 have been rescued from the consequences of a neglected education 
 by their own resolute mental exertions p. 282 — 367 
 
 A DISCOURSE, &c. p. 369-510 
 
ESSAY 
 
 POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 " MY PEOPLE ARE DESTROYED FOR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 HOSEA. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Defect of sensibility in the view of the unhappiness of mankind. — Igno- 
 rance one grand cause of that unhappiness. — Ignorance prevalent 
 among the ancient Jewish people. — Its injurious operation — and ulti- 
 mately destructive consequence. — More extended consideration of 
 ignorance as the cause of misery among the ancient heathens. 
 
 It may excite in us some sense of wonder, and 
 perhaps of self-reproach, to reflect with what a 
 stillness and indifference of the mind we can 
 hear and repeat sentences asserting facts which 
 are awful calamities ; a repose of feeling which 
 may be perceived to remain undisturbed, even 
 when those calamities are of the nature or have 
 the aggravation of moral and spiritual evil, that 
 evil which is acknowledged to bear the darkest 
 character of all. And this indifference is more 
 than the accidental and transient state, which 
 
2 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 might prevail at seasons of peculiar heaviness 
 or languor. The self-inspector will often be 
 compelled to acknowledge it as a symptom 
 and exemplification of the hahit of his mind, 
 that ideas of misery and destruction, though 
 expressed in the plainest strongest language, 
 seem to come with but a faint glimmer on his 
 apprehension, and die away without being able 
 to awake one emotion of that sensibility which 
 so many comparatively trifling causes can bring 
 into exercise. 
 
 Will the hearers of the sentence just now 
 repeated from the sacred book, give a moment's 
 attention to the effect which it has on them ? 
 We might suppose them accosted with the 
 question. Would you find it difficult to say what 
 idea, or whether any thing distinct enough to 
 deserve the name of an idea, has been impressed 
 by the sound of words bearing so melancholy 
 a significance ? And would you have to confess, 
 that they excite no interest which would not 
 instantly give place to that of the smallest of 
 your own concerns, occurring to your thoughts; 
 or would not leave free the tendency to wander 
 loose among casual fancies ; or would not yield 
 to feelings of the ludicrous, at the sight of any 
 little whimsical circumstance ? It would not 
 probably be unfair to suspect such faintness of 
 apprehension, and such unfixedness and indif- 
 ference of thought, in the majority of any large 
 number of persons, though drawn together 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. O 
 
 ostensibly to attend to matters of gravest con- 
 cern. And perhaps many of the most serious 
 of them would acknowledge it requires great 
 and repeated efforts to bring themselves to such 
 a contemplative application to an important 
 subject, that it shall lay hold on the affections, 
 though it should press on them, as in the pre- 
 sent instance, with facts and reflections of a 
 nature the most strongly appealing to a mourn- 
 ful sensibility. 
 
 That the " people are destroyed," is perceived 
 to have the sound of a lamentable declaration. 
 But its import loses all force of significance in 
 falling on a state of feeling which, if resolvable 
 into distinct sentiments, would be expressed to 
 some such effect as this : — that the people's 
 destruction, in whatever sense of the word, is 
 doubtless a deplorable thing, but quite a cus- 
 tomary and ordinary matter, the prevailing fact, 
 indeed, in the general state of this world ; that, 
 in truth, it would seem as if they were made but 
 to be destroyed, for that they have constantly 
 been, in all imaginable ways, the subjects of 
 destruction ; that, subjected in common with all 
 living corporeal beings on earth to the doom 
 of death, and to a fearful diversity of causes 
 tending to inflict it, they have also appeared, 
 through their long sad history, consigned to a 
 spiritual and moral destruction, if that term be 
 applicable to a condition the reverse of v/isdom, 
 goodness, and happiness ; that, in short, such 
 
 b2 
 
4 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 a sentence as that cited from the prophet, is too 
 merely an expression of what has been always 
 and over the whole world self-evident, to excite 
 any particular attention or emotion. 
 
 Thus the destruction, in every sense of the 
 word, of human creatures, is so constantly ob- 
 vious, as mingled and spread throughout the 
 whole system of things in which we are placed, 
 that the mind has been insensibly wrought to 
 that protective obtuseness which (like the thick- 
 ness of the natural clothing of animals in rigor- 
 ous climates) we acquire in defence of our own 
 ease against the aggrievance of things which 
 inevitably continue in our presence. An instinc- 
 tive policy to avoid feeling, with respect to this 
 prevailing destruction, has so effectually taught 
 us how to maintain the exemption, by all the 
 requisite sleights of overlooking, diverting, for- 
 getting, and admitting deceptive maxims of pal- 
 liation, that the art or habit is become almost 
 mechanical. When fully matured, it appears 
 like a wonderful adventitious faculty — a power 
 of evading the sight, of 7iot seeing, what is 
 obviously and glaringly presented to view on all 
 sides. There is, indeed, a dim general recogni- 
 tion that such things are ; the hearing of a bold 
 denial of their existence would give an instant 
 sense of absurdity, which would provoke a 
 pointed attention to them, the more perfectly 
 to verify their reality ; and the perception how 
 real and how dreadful they are, might continue 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. O 
 
 distinct as long as we were in the spirit of 
 contradicting and exploding that absurd denial ; 
 but, in the ordinary state of feeling, the mind 
 preserves an easy dulness of apprehension toward 
 the melancholy vision, and sees it as if it saw 
 it not. 
 
 This fortified insensibility may, indeed, be 
 sometimes broken in upon with violence, by the 
 sudden occurrence of some particular instance 
 of human destruction, in either import of the 
 word; some example of peculiar aggravation, 
 or happening under extraordinary and striking 
 circumstances, or very near us in place or in- 
 terest. An emotion is excited of pity, or terror, 
 or horror; so strong, that if the person so 
 affected has been habitually thoughtless and has 
 no wish to be otherwise, he fears he shall never 
 be able to recover his state of careless ease ; or 
 if of a more serious disposition, thinks it im- 
 possible he can ever cease to feel an awful 
 and salutary effect. This more serious person 
 perhaps also thinks, it must be inevitable that 
 henceforward his feelings will be more alive to 
 the miseries of mankind. But how obstinate is 
 an inveterate habitual state of the mind against 
 any single Impressions made in contravention to 
 it ! Both the thoughtless and the more reflective 
 man may probably find, that a comparatively 
 short lapse of time suffices, to relieve them from 
 any thing more than slight momentary remi- 
 niscences of what had struck them with such 
 
b ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 painful force, and to restore, in regard to the 
 general view of the acknowledged misery of the 
 human race, nearly the accustomed tranquillity. 
 The course of feeling bears some resemblance 
 to a listless stream of water, which, after having 
 been dashed into commotion by a massive sub- 
 stance flung into it, or by its precipitation at a 
 rapid, relapses, in the progress of a few fathoms 
 and a few moments, into its former sluggishness 
 of current. 
 
 But is it well that this should be the state 
 of feeling, in the immediate presence of the 
 spectacle exhibiting the people under a process 
 of being destroyed ? There must be a great and 
 criminal perversion from what our nature ought 
 to be, in a tranquillity to which it makes no 
 rjiaterial difference whether they be destroyed 
 or saved ; a tranquillity which would hardly, 
 perhaps, have been excited to an act of depre- 
 cation at such an appearance as that presented 
 to Oman ; and which might at the deluge have 
 permitted the privileged patriarch to sink in a 
 soft slumber, at the moment when the ark was 
 felt to move from its ground. If the original 
 rectitude of that nature had been retained by 
 any individual, he would be confounded to con- 
 ceive how creatures having their lot cast in one 
 place, so near together, so much alike, and 
 under such a complication of connexions and 
 dependences, can yet really be so insulated, as 
 that some of them may behold, with immovable 
 
ON POPULAR. IGNORANCE. / 
 
 composure, innumerable companies of the rest 
 in such a condition, that it had been better for 
 them not to have existed. 
 
 To such a condition a vast multitude have 
 been consigned by '' the lack of knowledge." 
 And we have to appeal concerning them to what- 
 ever there is of benevolence and conscience in 
 those who deem themselves happy instances of 
 exemption from this deplorable consignment ; 
 and are conscious that their state of inestimable 
 privilege is the result, under the blessing of 
 heaven, of the reception of information, of truth, 
 into their minds. 
 
 It may be presumed of many in a numerous 
 assemblage of serious persons, that if their 
 attention were directed to take an account of 
 the benefit they have received through the 
 medium of knowledge, they might say, with 
 truth and gratitude, that they do not well know 
 where to begin the long enumeration, or how to 
 bring into one estimate so ample a diversity 
 of good. It might be something like being 
 asked to specify, in brief terms, what a highly 
 improved portion of the ground, in a tract rude 
 and sterile if left to itself, has received Yrom 
 cultivation. No httle time would be required 
 to consider and recount what it has received. 
 The imagination is carried back through a gra- 
 dation of states and appearances, in which the 
 now fertile spots, and picture-like scenes, and 
 commodious passes, and pleasant habitations. 
 
8 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 raay or must have existed in the advance from 
 the original rudeness. The estimate of what 
 has ultimately been effected, rises at each stage 
 in this retrospect of the progress, in which so 
 many valuable changes and additions still 
 required to be followed by something more, to 
 complete the scheme of improvement. In thus 
 tracing backward the condition of a now fair 
 and productive place of human dwelling and 
 subsistence, it may easily be recollected, what a 
 vast number of the earth's inhabitants there are 
 whose places of dwelling are in all those states 
 of worse cultivation and commodiousness, and 
 what multitudes leading a miserable and preca- 
 rious life amidst the inhospitableness of the 
 waste howhng wilderness. Each presented 
 circumstance of fertility or shelter, salubrity or 
 beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a 
 much greater number of the occupants of the 
 world, than enjoy such an advantage. 
 
 If, in like manner, a person richly possessed 
 of the benefits imparted by means of knowledge, 
 finds, in attempting to estimate the amount of 
 good thus acquired, that the kinds and modes 
 of it, in their variety, combinations, and grada- 
 tions from less to greater, rise so fast on his 
 view as to overpower his computing faculty, he 
 may be reminded that this account of his wealth 
 is, in truth, that of many other men's poverty. 
 And if, while surveying these advantages, rising 
 to his view on every hand, like an irregular 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 crowd of loaded fruit-trees, one partially seen 
 behind the offered luxury of another, and others 
 still descried, through intervals, in the distance, 
 he can imagine all this to be blasted or con- 
 sumed, leaving him in a scene of mental desola- 
 tion, — and if he shall then consider that nearly 
 such is the state of the great multitude, — he 
 v^ill surely feel that a deep compassion is due to 
 so depressed a condition of existence. And 
 how strongly is its infelicity shown by the very 
 circumstance, that a being who is himself but 
 very imperfectly enlightened, and who is exposed 
 to sorrow and doomed to death, is yet in a state 
 to be able to look down upon the victims of the 
 " lack of knowledge" with profound commisera- 
 tion. The degree of pity is the measure of 
 conscious superiority. 
 
 We may say to persons so favoured, — If 
 knowledge has been made the cause that you 
 are beyond all comparison better qualified to 
 make the short sojourn on this earth to the 
 greatest advantage, think what a fatal thing that 
 must be which condemns so many, whose lot is 
 contemporary and in vicinity with yours, to pass 
 through the most precious possibilities of good 
 unprofited, and at last to look back on life as a 
 lost adventure. If through knowledge you have 
 been introduced into a new and superior world 
 of ideas and realities, and your intellectual being 
 has there been brought into exercise among the 
 highest interests, and into communication with 
 
10 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the noblest objects, think of that condition of 
 the soul to which this better economy has no 
 existence. If knowledge rendered efficacious 
 has become, in your minds, the light and joy of 
 the christian faith and hope, look at the state of 
 those whose minds have never been cultivated 
 to an ability to entertain the evangelical truths 
 even as mere intellectual notions. You would 
 not for the wealth of an empire consent to 
 descend, were it possible, from the comparative 
 elevation to which you have been raised by 
 means of knowledge, into the melancholy region 
 of spirits abandoned to ignorance. 
 
 But in this situation have the mass of the 
 people been from the time of the Prophet, whose 
 words we have cited, down to this hour. 
 
 The prophets had their exalted privilege of 
 dwelHng amidst the illuminations of heaven 
 effectually countervailed, as to any elation of 
 feeling it might have imparted, by the grief of 
 beholding the daily spectacle of the grossest 
 manifestations and mischiefs of ignorance, 
 among the people for the very purpose of whose 
 exemption from that ignorance it was that they 
 bore the sacred office. One of the most striking 
 of the characteristics by which their writings so 
 forcibly seize the imagination, is a strange con- 
 tinual fluctuation and strife of lustre and gloom, 
 produced by the intermingling and contrast of 
 the emanations from the Spirit of infinite 
 wisdom with those proceeding from the dark 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 11 
 
 debased souls of the people. We are tempted 
 to pronounce that nation not only the most 
 perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid 
 of all human tribes. The revealed law of God 
 in the midst of them ; the prophets and other 
 organs of oracular communication ; religious 
 ordinances and emblems; facts, made and ex- 
 pressly intended to embody truths, in long and 
 various series ; the whole system of their super- 
 human government, constituted as a school — 
 all these were ineffectual to create so much just 
 thought in their minds, as to save them from 
 the vainest and the vilest fancies, delusions, and 
 superstitions. 
 
 But, indeed, this very circumstance, that 
 knowledge shone on them from Him who knows 
 all things, may in part account for an intellectual 
 grossness that appears so peculiar and marvel- 
 lous. The nature of man is in such a moral 
 condition, that any thing is the less acceptable 
 for coming directly from God; it being quite 
 consistent, that the state of mind which is 
 declared to be *' enmity against him," should 
 have a dislike to his coming so near, as to 
 impart his communications by his immediate 
 act, and bearing on them the fresh and sacred 
 impression of his hand. The supplies for man's 
 temporal being are conveyed to him through an 
 extended medium, through a long process of 
 nature and art, which seems to place the great 
 First Cause at a commodious distance ; and 
 
12 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 those gifts are, on that account, more welcome, 
 on the whole, than if they were sent as the 
 manna to the Israelites. The manna itself would 
 not, probably, have been so soon loathed, had 
 it been produced in what we call the regular 
 course of nature. And with respect to the in- 
 tellectual communications which were given to 
 constitute the light of knowledge in their souls, 
 there can, on the same principle, be no doubt 
 that the people would more wilHngly have 
 opened their minds to receive them and exercise 
 the thinking faculties upon them, if they could 
 have appeared as something originating in hu- 
 man wisdom, or at least as something which, 
 though primarily from a divine origin, had been 
 long surrendered by the Revealer, to maintain 
 itself in the world by the authority of reason 
 only, like the doctrines worked out from mere 
 human speculation. But truth that was declared 
 to them, and inculcated on them, through a con- 
 tinual immediate manifestation of the Sovereign 
 Intelligence, had a glow of Divinity (if we may 
 so express it) that was unspeakably offensive 
 to their minds, which therefore receded with 
 instinctive avoidance. They were averse to look 
 toward that which they could not see without 
 seeing God ; and thus they were hardened in 
 ignorance, through a reaction of human de- 
 pravity against the too luminous approach of 
 the Divine presence to give them wisdom. 
 
 But in whatever degree the case might be 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 13 
 
 thus, as to the cause, the fact is evident, that 
 the Jewish people were not more remarkable for 
 this state of privilege, than for the little benefit, 
 in pbint of mental light, which they acquired 
 under a dispensation specially and miraculously 
 constituted and administered for their instruc- 
 tion. The sacred history of which they are 
 the subject, exhibits every mode in which the 
 intelligent faculties may evade or frustrate the 
 truth presented to them; every way in which 
 the decided preference for darkness may avail 
 to defy what might have been presumed to be 
 irresistible irradiations ; every perversity of will 
 which renders men as accountable and criminal 
 for being ignorant as for acting against know- 
 ledge ; and every form of practical mischief 
 in which the natural tendency of ignorance is 
 shown. A great part of what the devout teachers 
 of that people had to address to them, wherever 
 they appeared among them, was in reproach 
 of their ignorance, and in order if possible to 
 dispel it. And were we to indulge our fancy in 
 picturing the forms and circumstances in which 
 it was encountered by those teachers, we might 
 be sure of not erring much by figuring situations 
 very similar to what might occur in much later 
 and nearer states of society. If we should 
 imagine one of these good and wise instructors 
 going into a promiscuous company of the people, 
 and asking them, with a view at once to see 
 into their minds and inform them, say ten plain 
 
14 -ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 questions, relative to matters somewhat above 
 the ordinary secular concerns of life, but essen- 
 tial for them to understand, it would be a quite 
 probable supposition that he did not obtain 
 from the whole company rational answers to 
 more than three, or two, or even one, of those 
 questions, notwithstanding that every one of 
 them might be designedly so framed, as to admit 
 of an easy reply from the most prominent of the 
 dictates of the " law and the prophets," and 
 from the right application of the memorable 
 facts in the national history of the Jews. In 
 his earlier experiments he might be supposed 
 very reluctant to admit the fact, that so many 
 of his countrymen, in one spot, could have 
 been so faithfully maintaining the ascendency 
 of darkness in their spirits, while surrounded 
 by divine manifestations of truth. He might be 
 willing to suspect he had not been happy in the 
 form of words in which his queries had been 
 conveyed. But it may be believed that all his 
 changes and adaptations of expression, to elicit 
 from the contents of his auditors' understand- 
 ings something fairly answering to his questions, 
 might but complete the proof that the thing 
 sought was not there. And while he might be 
 looking from one to another, with regret not 
 unmingled with indignation at an ignorance at 
 once so unhappy and so criminal, they probably 
 might little care, excepting some slight feeling 
 of mortified pride, that they were thus proved 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 15 
 
 to be nearly pagans in knowledge within the 
 immediate hearing of the oracles of God. 
 
 Or we may represent to ourselves this bene- 
 volent promoter of improvement endeavouring 
 to instruct such a company, not in the way 
 of interrogation, but in the ordinary manner of 
 discourse, and assuming that they actually had 
 in their minds those principles, those points of 
 knowledge, which would, on the former sup- 
 position of a course of questions, have qualified 
 them to make the proper replies. It may indeed 
 be too much to imagine a discerning man to 
 entertain such a presumption ; but supposing he 
 did, you can well conceive what reception the 
 reasonings, advices, or reproofs, proceeding upon 
 it, would find among the hearers, according to 
 their respective temperaments. Some would be 
 content with knowing nothing at all about the 
 matter, which, they would perhaps say, might 
 be, for aught they knew, something very wise ; 
 and, according to their greater or less degree of 
 patience and sense of decorum, would wait in 
 quiet and perhaps sleepy dulness for the end 
 of the irksome- lecture, or escape from it by a 
 stolen retreat, or by an open and ostentatiously 
 noisy manner of going away. To others it 
 would all seem ridiculous absurdity, and they 
 would readily laugh aloud if any one would 
 begin. A few possessed of some natural shrewd- 
 ness, would set themselves to catch at some- 
 thing in the way of cavil, with uncouth aim, but 
 
16 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 eager intention. 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 frustra- 
 tion of his efforts upon the invincible grossness 
 of the subjects before him, would become ani- 
 mated 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 duty it was to instruct the 
 Jewish people. 
 
 Now if such were the state of their intelli- 
 gence, 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 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 17 
 
 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 
 the points of information thus demonstrated to 
 be necessary, were not contained ; of which 
 minds, therefore, the estimates, passions, voli- 
 tions, principles of action, with the actions also, 
 were in so many instances abandoned to take 
 their chance for good or evil. But had they 
 any chance for good in such an abandonment ? 
 What principle in their nature was to determine 
 them to good, with an impulse that rendered 
 needless the rational discrimination of it by the 
 light of truth ? It were an exceedingly probable 
 thing truly, that some happy instinct, or some 
 guiding star of good fortune, should have be- 
 guiled into an unknowing choice of what is 
 right, that very nature which knowledge itself, 
 including a recognition of the will of God, is 
 so often insufficient to constrain to such a 
 choice. 
 
18 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 But further ; the absence of knowledge is 
 sure to be something more and worse than 
 simple ignorance. Even were that absence but 
 a mere negation, a vacancy of truth, (the terms 
 truth and knowledge may be used for our pre- 
 sent purpose as nearly synonymous,) it would 
 be, by its effect as a deficiency, incalculably 
 injurious. But it could not remain a mere 
 deficiency : the vacancy of truth would com- 
 monly be found replenished with positive error. 
 Not indeed replenished, (we are speaking of 
 uncultivated persons,) with a comprehensive 
 and arranged set of false notions ; for there 
 would not be thinking enough to form opinions 
 in any sufficient number to be distinctly and 
 specifically the opposites to the many truths 
 that were absent : but a few false notions, such 
 as could hardly fail to take the place of absent 
 truth in the ignorant mind, however crude they 
 might be, and however deficient for constituting 
 a full system of error, would be sure to dilate 
 themselves so as to have an operation at all the 
 points where truth was wanting. It is frightful 
 to see what a space in an ignorant mind one 
 false notion can occupy, working nearly the 
 same effect in many distinct particulars, as if 
 there had been so many distinct wrong prin- 
 ciples, each producing specifically its own bad 
 effect. So that in that mind a few false notions, 
 and those the ones most likely to establish 
 themselves there, shall be virtually equivalent 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 19 
 
 to a whole scheme of errors standing formally in 
 place of so many truths of which they are the 
 reverse. And thus the dark void of ignorance, 
 instead of remaining a mere negation, becomes 
 filled with agents of perversion and destruction ; 
 as sometimes the gloomy apartments of a de- 
 serted mansion have become a den of robbers 
 and murderers. 
 
 Such a friend of the people, then, as we were 
 supposing to expend his life and zeal on the 
 object of rescuing them from their ignorance, 
 would see in that ignorance not only the pri- 
 vation of all direction and impulsion to good, 
 but a great positive force of determination to- 
 ward evil. 
 
 But it may be alleged, that he would not 
 find them wholly destitute of right information. 
 True ; but he would find that the small portion 
 of knowledge which an ignorant people did 
 really possess, could be of little avail. It is not 
 only that, from the narrowness of its scope, 
 knowledge so scanty as to afford no principles 
 adapted for a strict application to a vast number 
 of niatters of judgment and conduct, would of 
 course be of small use, though it were efficient 
 as far as it reached, — though it did produce that 
 very limited quantity of good which might fairly 
 be required from it as its proper share, in a due 
 proportion to the larger amount of good which 
 would be produced by a larger knowledge. This 
 is not the whole of the misfortune : it would not 
 
 c2 
 
20 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 produce that proportionate share. For the fewer 
 are the points to which there is knowledge that 
 can be appHed, the less availing is its application 
 even to those few points. It shall be the kind 
 of knowledge apposite to them, and yet be 
 useless ; from the obvious cause, that a few 
 just notions existing disconnected and confused 
 among the mass of vain and false ones, which 
 will, like noxious weeds, infest minds left in 
 ignorance, can have little clearness, precision, 
 and force of truth, for aiiy application. An 
 understanding that contains but a little of truth 
 will commonly hold that little with both a feeble 
 apprehension, and a great liability to have it 
 perverted to subserve the errors which occupy 
 that same mind. The conjunction of truths is 
 of the utmost importance for preserving the 
 genuine tendency, and securing the appropriate 
 efficacy, of each. It is an unhappy "lack of 
 knowledge" when there is not enough to pre- 
 serve, to what there is of it, the honest beneficial 
 quality of knowledge. How many of the follies, 
 excesses, and crimes, in the course of the world, 
 have taken their pretended warrant from some 
 fragment of truth, dissevered from the connexion 
 of truths indispensable to its right operation, 
 and in that detached state easily perverted into 
 coalescence with the most pernicious principles, 
 which concealed and gave effect to their malig- 
 nity under the plausibiHty thus acquired through 
 the fallacious application of a truth. 
 
O'ti POPULAR IGNORANCE. 21 
 
 There were many and melancholy exemplifi- 
 cations of all we have said of ignorance, in the 
 conduct of that ancient people at present in our 
 view. Doubtless a sad proportion of the ini- 
 quities which, by their necessary tendency and 
 by the divine vindictive appointment, brought 
 plagues and destruction upon them, were com- 
 mitted in violation of what they knew. But also 
 it was in no small part from blindness to the 
 manifestation of truth and duty incessantly con- 
 fronting them, that they were betrayed into 
 crimes and consequent miseries. This is evi- 
 dent equally from the language in which their 
 prophets reproached their intellectual stupidity, 
 and from the surprise which they sometimes 
 seem to have felt on finding themselves involved 
 in retributive suffering, for what they could not 
 perceive to be at the worst any thing more 
 than trifling and excusable negligences in their 
 conduct. It appeared as if they had never so 
 much as dreamed of such a consequence ; and 
 their monitors had to represent to them, that 
 it had been through their thoughtlessness of 
 divine dictates and warnings, if they did not 
 know that such proceedings would have such 
 a termination. 
 
 How one portion of knowledge admitted, with 
 the exclusion of other truths equally indispen- 
 sable to be known, may not only be unavailing, 
 but may in effect lend force to destructive error, 
 is dreadfully illustrated in the final catastrophe 
 
22 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of that favoured guilty nation. They were in 
 possession of the one important point of know- 
 ledge, that a Messiah was to come. They held 
 this assurance not slightly, but with strong con- 
 viction, and as a matter of the utmost interest. 
 But then, that this knowledge might have its 
 appropriate and happy effect, it was of essential 
 necessity for them to know also the character of 
 this Messiah, and the real nature of his great 
 design. But this they closed up their under- 
 standings in a fatal contentment not to know. 
 Literally the whole people, with an exception 
 awfully diminutive, had failed, or rather refused, 
 to admit, as to that part of the subject, the 
 inspired declarations. Now comes the conse- 
 quence of knowing only one thing of several 
 that require to be inseparable in knowledge. 
 They formed to themselves a false idea of the 
 Messiah, according to their own worldly ima- 
 ginations ; and they extended the full assurance 
 which they justly entertained of his coming, 
 to this false notion of what he was to be and to 
 accomplish when he should come. From this 
 it was natural and inevitable that when the true 
 Messiah should come they would not recognise 
 him, and that their hostility would be excited 
 against a person who, while demanding to be 
 acknowledged in that capacity, appeared with- 
 out the characteristics pictured in their vain 
 imagination, and with directly opposite ones. 
 And thus they were placed in an incomparably 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 23 
 
 worse situation for receiving him with honour 
 when he did appear, than if they had had no 
 knowledge at all that a Messiah was to come. 
 For on that supposition they might have regarded 
 him as a most striking phenomenon, with curio- 
 sity 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 com- 
 mencement 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 them- 
 selves to perish, while he looked on their great 
 city, and wept at the doom which he beheld 
 impending, said. If thou 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 perniciousness 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 
 
24 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 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, 
 had gradually lost their clearness and purity, 
 and at length passed, by a transition through 
 some delusive analogies, into the vanities of 
 fancy and notion which sprang from the inven- 
 tive depravity of man ; which inventions claimed 
 an authority stolen from the grand truths they 
 had superseded. And thus, if we except so 
 much instruction as we may conceive that the 
 extraordinary and sometimes dreadful interposi- 
 tions of the Governor of the world might convey, 
 unaccompanied with declarations in language, 
 (and it was in but an extremely limited degree 
 that these had actually the effect of illumina- 
 tion,) the human tribes were surrendered to 
 their own understanding for all that they were 
 to know and think. Melancholy predicament ! 
 The understanding, the intellect, the reason, 
 which had not sufficed for preserving the true 
 light from heaven, was to be competent to give 
 light in its absence. Under the disadvantage 
 of this loss — after the setting of the sun — it 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 25 
 
 was to exercise itself on an unlimited diversity 
 of important things, inquiring, comparing, and 
 deciding. All those things, if examined far, ex- 
 tended into mystery. All genuine thinking was 
 a hard repellent labour. Casual impressions 
 had a mighty force of perversion. The senses 
 were not a medium through which the intellect 
 could receive ideas foreign to material existence. 
 The appetites and passions would infallibly oc- 
 cupy and actuate the whole man. When by 
 these his imagination was put in activity, its 
 gleams and meteors would be any thing rather 
 than lights of truth. His interest, according to 
 his gross apprehension of it, would in number- 
 less instances require, and therefore would gain, 
 false judgments for justification of the wrong 
 manner of pursuing that interest. And all this 
 while, there was no grand standard and test to 
 which the notions of things could be brought. 
 If there were some spirits of larger and purer 
 thought, that went out in the honest search of 
 truth, they must have felt an oppression of utter 
 hopelessness in looking round on a world of 
 doubtful things, on no one of which they could 
 obtain the dictate of a supreme intelligence. 
 There was no sovereign demonstrator in com- 
 munication with the earth, to tell wretched 
 man what to think in any of a thousand ques- 
 tions which arose to confound him. There 
 were, instead, impostors, magicians, vain theo- 
 rists, prompted by ambition and superior native 
 
26 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 ability to abuse the credulity of their fellow 
 mortals, which they did with such success as 
 to become their oracles, their dictators, or 
 even their gods. The multitude most naturally 
 ' surrendered themselves to all such delusions. 
 If it may be conceived to have been possible 
 that their feeble and degraded reason, in the 
 absence of divine hght and of sound human dis- 
 cipline, might by earnest exertion have attained 
 in some small degree to judge better, that 
 exertion was precluded by indolence, by the 
 immediate wants and unavoidable employments 
 of life, by sensuality, by love of amusement, by 
 subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and 
 national institutions, and by the tendency of 
 human individuals to fall, if we may so ex- 
 press it, in dead conformity and addition to the 
 lump. 
 
 The result of all these causes, the sum of all 
 these effects, was that unnumbered millions of 
 beings, whose value was in their intelligent and 
 moral nature, were, as to that nature, in a con- 
 dition analogous to what their physical existence 
 would have been under a total and permanent 
 eclipse of the sun. It was perpetual night in 
 their souls, with all the phenomena incident to 
 night, except the subhmity. While the material 
 economy, constituting the order of things which 
 belonged to their temporal existence, was in 
 conspicuous manifestation around them, press- 
 ing with its realities on their senses ; while 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 27 
 
 nature presented to them its open and distinctly- 
 featured aspect ; while there was a true light 
 shed on them every morning from the sun ; 
 while they had constant experimental evidence 
 of the nature of the scene ; and thus they had 
 a clear knowledge of one portion of the things 
 connected with their existence — that portion 
 which they were soon to leave, and look back 
 upon as a dream when one awaketh ; — all this 
 while there was subsisting, present with them, 
 unapprehended except in faint and delusive 
 glimpses, another order of things involving their 
 greatest interests, with no luminary to make that 
 apparent tq them, after the race had willingly 
 forgotten the original instructions from their 
 Creator. 
 
 The dreadful consequences of this " lack of 
 knowledge," as appearing in the religion and 
 morals of the nations, and through these affect- 
 ing their welfare, equalled and even surpassed 
 all that might by theory have been presaged 
 from the cause. 
 
 This ignorance could not annihilate the prin- 
 ciple of religion in the spirit of man ; but in 
 taking away the awful repression of the idea 
 of one exclusive sovereign Divinity, it left that 
 spirit to form its religion in its own manner. 
 And as the creating of gods might be the most 
 appropriate way of celebrating the deliverance 
 from the most imposing idea of one Supreme 
 Being, depraved and insane invention took this 
 
28 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 direction with ardour.* The mind threw a 
 fictitious divinity into its own phantasms, and 
 into the objects in the visible world. It is 
 amazing to observe how, when one solemn prin- 
 ciple was taken away, the promiscuous number- 
 less crowd of almost all shapes of fancy and 
 of matter became, as it were, instinct with 
 ambition, and mounted into gods. They were 
 alternately the toys and the tyrants of their 
 miserable creator. They appalled him often, 
 and often he could make sport vsdth them. For 
 overawing him by their supposed power, they 
 made him a compensation by descending to a 
 fellowship with his follies and vices. But indeed 
 this was a condition of their creation ; they must 
 own their mortal progenitor by sharing his de- 
 pravity, even amidst the lordly domination over 
 him and the universe. We may safely affirm, 
 that the mighty artificer of deifications, the 
 corrupt soul of man, never once, in its almost 
 infinite diversification of device in their pro- 
 duction, struck out a form of absolute goodness. 
 No, if there were ten thousand deities, there 
 should not be one that should be authorized by 
 perfect rectitude in itself to punish him ; not 
 
 * Those who have read Goethe's Memoirs of Himself may 
 recollect the part where that late idolized " patriarch" of 
 German literature tells of the lively interest he had at one 
 time felt in shaping out of his imagination and philosophy a 
 theology, beginning with the fabrication of a god (or gods), 
 and amplified into a system of principles, existences, and 
 relations. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 29 
 
 one by which it should be possible for him to be 
 rebuked without having a right to recriminate. 
 
 Such a pernicious creation of active delusions 
 it was that took the place of religion in the 
 absence of knowledge. And to this intellectual 
 obscuration, and this legion of pestilent fallacies, 
 swarming like the locusts from the smoke of 
 the bottomless pit in the vision of St. John, 
 the fatal effect on morals and happiness cor- 
 responded. Indeed the mischief done there 
 perhaps even exceeded the proportion of the 
 ignorance and the false theology ; conformably 
 to the rule, that any thing wrong in the mind 
 will be the most wrong where it comes the 
 nearest to its ultimate practical effect — except 
 when in this operation outward it is met and 
 checked by some foreign counteraction. 
 
 The people of those nations (and the same 
 description is applicable to modern heathens) 
 did not know the essential nature of perfect 
 goodness, or virtue. How should they know it ? 
 A depraved mind would not find in itself any 
 native conception to give the bright form of it. 
 There were no living examples of it. The men 
 who held the pre-eminence in the community 
 were generally, in the most important points, its 
 reverse. It was for the Divine nature to have 
 presented, in a manifestation of itself, the arche- 
 type of perfect rectitude, whence might have 
 been derived the modified exemplar for human 
 virtue. And so would the idea of perfect moral 
 
30 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 excellence have come to dwell and shine in the 
 understanding, if it had been the True Divinity 
 that men beheld in their contemplations of a 
 superior existence. But when the gods of their 
 heaven were little better than their own evil 
 qualities, exalted to the sky to be thence re- 
 flected back upon them invested with Olympian 
 charms and splendors, their ideas of deity 
 would evidently combine with the causes which 
 made it impossible for them to conceive a perfect 
 model for human excellence. See the mighty 
 labour of human depravity to confirm its domi- 
 nion ! It would translate itself to heaven, and 
 usurp divinity, in order to come down thence 
 with a sanction for man to be wicked, — in order, 
 by a falsification of the qualities of the Supreme 
 Nature, to preclude his forming the true idea of 
 what would be perfect rectitude in his own. 
 
 A system which could thus associate all the 
 modes of turpitude with the most lofty and illus- 
 trious forms of existence, would go far toward 
 vitiating essentially the entire theory of moral 
 good and evil. And it would in a great measure 
 defraud of their practical efificacy any just prin- 
 ciples that might, after all, maintain their place 
 in the convictions of the understanding, and 
 assert their claim with a voice which not even 
 all this ruination could silence. 
 
 But, how small was the number of pure moral 
 principles, (if indeed any,) that among the people 
 of the heathen nations did maintain themselves 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 31 
 
 in the convictions of the understanding. The 
 privation of divine light gave full freedom, if 
 there was any disposition to take such licence, 
 for every perverse speculation which could ope- 
 rate toward abolishing those principles in the 
 natural reason of the species. The disposition 
 there would be to take it may be imagined, when 
 the abolishing of those principles was evidently 
 to be also the destruction of all intrinsic au- 
 thority in the practical rules founded on them, 
 which destruction would confer an exemption 
 infinitely desirable. The freedom for such think- 
 ing would infallibly be taken, in its utmost 
 extent; and in fact the speculation was stimu- 
 lated by so mighty a force of the depraved 
 passions, that it went far beyond the primary 
 intention : it not only annulled the right prin- 
 ciples and rules, but created opposite ones, so 
 that the name and repute of virtues were given 
 to iniquities without number. It is deplorable 
 to consider how large a proportion of all the 
 vices and crimes of which mankind were ever 
 guilty, have actually constituted, in some or 
 other of their tribes and ages, a part of the 
 approved moral and rehgious system. It is 
 questionable whether we could select from the 
 worst forms of turpitude any one which has not 
 been at least admitted among the authorized 
 customs, if not even appointed among the in- 
 stitutes of the rehgion, of some portion of 
 the human race. And depravities thus become 
 
32 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 licensed or sacred would have a fatal facility of 
 communicating somewhat of their quality to all 
 the other parts of the moral system. For this 
 sanction both would reinforce their own power 
 of infection, and would so beguile away all re- 
 pugnance and counteraction, that the rest of the 
 customs and institutes would readily admit the 
 contamination, and become assimilated in evil ; 
 as the Mahomedans have no care to avoid 
 contact with their neighbours who are ill of the 
 plague, since the plague has the warrant of 
 heaven. Wherever, therefore, in the imperfect 
 notices afforded us of ancient nations, we find 
 any one virulent iniquity holding an authorized 
 place in custom or religion, we may confidently 
 make a very large inference, though record were 
 silent, as to the corresponding quality that would 
 pervade the remainder of the moral system of 
 those nations. Indeed the inference is equally 
 justified whether we regard such a sanction and 
 establishment of a flagrant iniquity as a cause, 
 or as an effect. Suppose it to precede the com- 
 pleted corruption of morals, — and how rapidly 
 would it precipitate their progress to the last 
 depravation. Suppose it to be, (the more na- 
 tural order,) the result and completion of that 
 corruption, — how vicious must have been that 
 previous state which naturally led to such an 
 enormity ; a state which but wanted its con- 
 summation in this inversion of an essential 
 eternal law of morality. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 33 
 
 Every thing that, under the advantage given 
 by this destitution of knowledge, operated to the 
 destruction of the true morahty, both in theory 
 and practice, must have had a fatal augmentation 
 of its power in that part especially of this igno- 
 rance which respected hereafter. The doctrine 
 of a future existence and retribution did not, in 
 any rational and salutary form, interfere in the 
 adjustment of the economy of life. The shadowy 
 notion of a future state which hovered about the 
 minds of the pagans, a vague apparition which 
 alternately came and vanished, was at once too 
 fantastic and too little of a serious belief to be 
 of any avail to preserve the rectitude, or to 
 maintain the authority, of the distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong. It was not defined 
 enough, or noble enough, or convincing enough, 
 or of judicial application enough, either to assist 
 the efficacy of such moral principles as might 
 be supposed to be innate in a rational creature, 
 and competent for prescribing to it some virtues 
 useful and necessary to it even if its present brief 
 existence were all, or to enjoin effectually those 
 higher virtues to which there can be no adequate 
 inducement but in the expectation of a future life. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, the withdrawment of this 
 doctrine from the faith of those who have a 
 solemn persuasion of it as a part of revealed 
 truth. Suppose the grand idea either wholly 
 obliterated, or faded into a dubious trace of what 
 it had been, or transmuted into a poetic dream 
 
34 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of classic or barbarian mythology, — and how 
 many moral principles would be found to have 
 vanished with it. How many things, before 
 rendered imperative by this great article of faith, 
 would have ceased to be duties, or would con- 
 tinue such only on the strength, and to the 
 extent of the requirement, of some very minor 
 consideration which might remain to enforce 
 them, and that probably in a most deteriorated 
 form. The sense of obligation, if continuing to 
 recognise the nature of duty in things which 
 could then no longer retain any such quality, 
 otherwise than as looking to the most immediate 
 and tangible benefit or harm, the lowest of moral 
 calculations, would be reduced to a vulgar and 
 reptile principle. The best of its strength, and 
 all its dignity, would be departed from it when 
 it could refer no more to eternity, an invisible 
 world, and a judgment to come. It would 
 therefore have none of that emphasis of im- 
 pression which can sometimes dismay and quell 
 the most violent passions, as by the mysterious 
 awe of the presence of a spirit. It would be 
 deprived of that which forms the chief power of 
 conscience. And it would be impotent in any 
 attempt — if so absurd an attempt could be 
 dreamed of — to uphold in the more dignified 
 character of principle, that care of what is right 
 which would be constantly degenerating into mere 
 policy, and rationally justifying itself in doing so. 
 The withdrawment, we said, of the grand truth 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 35 
 
 in question, from a man's faith, would necessarily 
 break up the government over his conscience. 
 How evident then is it, that among the people 
 of the heathen lands, under a disastrous igno- 
 rance of this and all the other sublime truths 
 that are the most fit to rule an immortal being 
 during his sojourn on earth, no man could feel 
 any peremptory obhgation to be universally 
 virtuous, or adequate motives to excite an en- 
 deavour to approach that high attainment, even 
 were there not a perfect inabihty to form the 
 true conception of it.- And then how much of 
 course it was that the general mass would be 
 dreadfully depraved. Though a momentary 
 surprise may at times have seized us on the 
 occurrence, in their history, of some surpassing 
 and monstrous form of flagitiousness, we do not 
 wonder at beholding a state of the people such 
 in its general character as the sacred writers 
 exhibit, in descriptions to which the other re- 
 cords of antiquity add their confirming testimony 
 and ample illustrations. For while the immense 
 aggregate is displayed to the mental view, as all 
 pervaded, agitated, and stimulated, by the rest- 
 less forces of appetites and passions, and those 
 forces operating with perverted impulse, let it 
 be asked what kinds and measure of restraint 
 there could be upon such a world of creatures 
 so actuated, to keep them from rushing in all 
 ways into evil. Conceive, if you can, the fiction 
 of such a multitude, so actuated, having been 
 
 d2 
 
36 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 placed under an adjustment of restraints com- 
 petent to withhold them. And then take off, in 
 your imagination, one after another of these, to 
 see what will follow. Take off, at last, all the 
 coercion that can be applied through the belief 
 of a judgment to come, and a future state of 
 retribution ; — by doing which you would also 
 empower the race to defy the Supreme Governor, 
 if any idea of him could be supposed to remain. 
 All these sacred bonds being thus dissolved, 
 behold this countless multitude abandoned to be 
 carried or driven the whole length to which the 
 impulses of their appetites and passions would 
 go, — or could go before they were arrested by 
 some obstruction opposed to them from a 
 quarter foreign to conscience. And the main 
 and final thing in reserve to limit their career, 
 after all the worthier restraints were annihilated, 
 would be only this, — the resistance which men's 
 self-interest opposes to one another's bad in- 
 clinations. A gloomy and humiliating spectacle 
 truly it is, to be offered by a world of rational 
 and moral agents, if we see that, instead of a 
 repression of the propensity to wickedness by 
 reverence of the Sovereign Judge, and the 
 anticipation of a future life, there is merely a 
 restraint put upon its external activity, and that 
 by the force of men's fears of one another. But 
 to this it was, as the only strong restraint, that 
 those heathens were left by their ignorance of a 
 future existence and judgment. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 37 
 
 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, under Providence, prevented 
 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 apprised 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 accomplish- 
 ing its circles round the sun for thousands of 
 years past without a human inhabitant. Through 
 the effect of this essential law in the social eco- 
 nomy, 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 
 
38 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 operation on the depravity of the heart. It was 
 not through a judgment of things being essen- 
 tially evil that they were forborne ; it was not 
 by the power of conscience that wicked pro- 
 pensity 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 pre- 
 vention 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.* 
 
 But even this restraint imposed by mutual 
 apprehension, important as its operation was in 
 the absence of nobler influences, was yet of 
 miserably partial efficacy. Men were continually 
 breaking through this protective provision, and 
 committed against one another a stupendous 
 amount of crimes. And no wonder, when we 
 consider that the evil passions, endowed as they 
 seem to be with a portentous excess of vigour 
 by the very circumstance of being evil, (as the 
 demoniacs were the strongest of men,) are ex- 
 asperated the more by a certain degree of awe 
 impressed on them by the defensive attitude of 
 their objects. When strength so great might 
 thus be irritated to greater, and when there 
 
 * It is not very uncommon to hear credit given to human 
 nature, apparently in sober simplicity, for the whole amount 
 of the negation of bad actions thus prevented, as just so much 
 genuine virtue, by some dealers in moral and theological 
 speculation. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 39 
 
 were no " powers of the world to come," to 
 invade the dreadful cavern of iniquity in the 
 mind, and there to combat and subdue it, there 
 would often be no want of the audacity to send 
 it forth into action at all hazards, and in de- 
 fiance and contempt of the restraining force 
 which operated through mutual fear of vindic- 
 tive reaction. 
 
 But it may be said, perhaps, that in thus 
 representing the people who were destitute of 
 divine knowledge as left with hardly any other 
 control on their bad dispositions than one of a 
 quality little more dignified than fetters literally 
 binding the limbs, we are underrating what there 
 still was among them to take effect in the way 
 of instruction. Even this coarse principle of 
 control itself, it may be alleged, this prudence 
 of reciprocal fear, became refined into something 
 worthier of moral agents. For it passed, by a 
 compromise among the species, from the form 
 of individual self-defence and revenge into that 
 of institutions of law ; and legislation, it will be 
 said, is a teacher of morals. Retaining, indeed, 
 the rough expedient of physical force, in readi- 
 ness to coerce or punish where it cannot deter 
 by warning, it yet strongly endeavours the re- 
 pression of evil emotions by means of right 
 principles, marked out, explained, and inculcated. 
 It teaches these principles as dictates of reason 
 and justice, while it embodies them in the au- 
 thority of enactments. There was therefore, it 
 
40 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 may be pleaded, as much instruction among the 
 ancient heathens as there was legislation. 
 
 In answering this, we may forego any rigorous 
 examination of the quality of principles and 
 precepts enunciated by legislators who them- 
 selves, in common with the people, looked on 
 human existence and duty through a worse than 
 twilight medium ; who had no divine oracles to 
 impart wisdom, and were, some of them, reduced 
 to begin their operations with the lie that pre- 
 tended they had such oracles ; from all which 
 it was inevitable that some of their maxims 
 and injunctions would in their very efficacy be 
 noxious, as being at variance with eternal recti- 
 tude. It is enough to observe, on the claims of 
 legislation to the character of a moral preceptor, 
 that it retained so palpably, after all, the nature 
 of the gross element from which it was a refine- 
 ment or transfusion, that even what it might 
 teach right, as to the matter, it was unable to 
 teach with the right moral impression. With 
 all its gravity, and phrases of wisdom, and show 
 of homage to virtue, it was, and was plainly 
 descried to be, that very same Noli me tangere, 
 in a disguised form ; a less provoking and hostile 
 manner only of keeping up the state of prepara- 
 tion for defensive war. Every one knew right 
 well that the pure approbation and love of good- 
 ness were not the source of law ; but that it was 
 an arrangement originating and deriving all its 
 force from self-interest ; a contrivance by which 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 41 
 
 each man was glad to make the collective 
 strength of society his guarantee against his 
 neighbour's interest and wish to do him wrong. 
 While pleased that others were under this re- 
 straint, he was often vexed at being under it 
 also himself; but on the whole deemed this 
 security worth the cost of suffering the interdict 
 on his own inclinations, — perhaps as believing 
 other men's to be still worse than his, or seeing 
 their strength to be greater. We repeat that 
 a preceptive system thus estimated could not, 
 even had the principles to which it gave ex- 
 pression in the mandates of law, been no other 
 than those of the soundest morality, have im- 
 pressed them with the weight of sanctity on the 
 conscience. And all this but tends to show 
 the necessity that the rules and sanctions of 
 morality, to come with simplicity and power on 
 the human mind, ^should primarily emanate, and 
 be acknowledged as emanating, from a Being 
 exalted above all implication and competition of 
 interests with man. 
 
 Thus we see, that the pagan ignorance pre- 
 cluded one grand requisite for crushing the 
 dominion of iniquity ; for there was nothing to 
 insinuate or to force its way into the recesses of 
 the soul, to apply there a repressive power to the 
 depraved ardour which glowed in the passions. 
 That was left, inaccessible and inextinguishable, 
 as the subterranean fires in a volcanic region. 
 And in the mighty impulse to evil with which it 
 
42 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 was continually operating as an energy of feeling, 
 it compelled the subservience of the intellect ; 
 and thus combined the passions with a faculty 
 skilful to guide their direction, to diversify their 
 objects, to invent expedients, and to seize and 
 create occasions. What was it that this intelli- 
 gent depravity would stop short of accomplish- 
 ing ? Reflect on the extent of human genius, 
 in its powers of invention, combination, and 
 adaptation; and then think of all this faculty, 
 in an immense number of minds, through many 
 ages, and in every imaginable variety of situa- 
 tion, exerted with unremitting activity in aid 
 of the wrong propensities. Reflect how many 
 ideas, apt and opportune for this service, would 
 spring up casually, or be suggested by circum- 
 stances, or be attained by the earnest study of 
 beings goaded in pursuit of change and novelty. 
 The simple modes of iniquity were put under an 
 active ministry of art, to combine, innovate, and 
 augment. And so indefatigable was its exercise, 
 that almost all conceivable forms of immorality 
 were brought to imagination, most of them into 
 experiment, and the greater number into pre- 
 vailing practice, in those nations : insomuch 
 that the sated monarch would have imposed 
 as difficult a task on ingenuity in calling for the 
 invention of a new vice, as of a new pleasure. 
 They would perhaps have been nearly iden- 
 tical demands when he was the person to be 
 pleased. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 43 
 
 Such are some of the most obvious illustrations 
 that the absence of knowledge was a cause, and 
 added in an unknown measure to the strength 
 of all other causes, of the excessive corruption in 
 the heathen nations. And if this depravity of 
 a world of moral agents did not, contemplated 
 simply as a destruction of their rectitude, appear 
 equivalent to the gravest import of the terms 
 '' the people are destroyed," the misery inse- 
 parable from the depravity instantly comes in 
 our view to complete their verification. 
 
 We are aware that the wickedness and misery 
 of the ancient world, as asserted in illustration 
 of the natural effect of estrangement from divine 
 truth, are apt to be regarded as of the order of 
 topics which have dwindled into insignificance, 
 worn out by being repeated just because they 
 have often been repeated before ; a sort of ex- 
 hausted quarries and dried-up wells. There is 
 a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in 
 whose conceit nothing is such proof of superior 
 sense as discarding the greatest number of topics 
 and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is 
 to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing 
 again the old maxims, that a people without 
 divine instruction must be a vicious one, and 
 that a vicious people must be an unhappy 
 one, — and those maxims accompanied with a 
 description of the old pagan world as illustrative 
 evidence, — will be prompt to let forth their 
 comments in some such strain as the following : 
 
44 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 — '' The state of the ancient heathens, thus 
 '' brought upon us in one cheap declamation 
 " more, is now a matter of trivial import, just 
 *' fit to give some show and exaggeration to 
 " a common-place. They might be wretched 
 " enough ; and perhaps also the matter has been 
 " extravagantly magnified for the service of a 
 " favourite theme, or to afford indulgence to 
 " rhetorical excess. 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 
 " very 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 learn- 
 ing any thing by means of them. It is fortunate, 
 also, to have ascertained how much of all that 
 ever existed can teach us nothing ; though it is 
 certainly not a little strange, that so ample a 
 volume of the story of our race should be found 
 to contain nothing worthy to keep it open before 
 us any longer. We have a signal improvement 
 in the fashion of wisdom, when that high en- 
 dowment may be possessed as a thing quite 
 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 govern- 
 ment as carried over a wide extent of time. But 
 indeed, this being^ wise without being ever the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 45 
 
 wiser for the past, 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 
 av/ful events that were gone by, without per- 
 ceiving inscribed on them any characters for 
 contemplation to read. It is not impossible 
 there might be persons so exclusively occupied 
 with contemporary occurrences and topics, so 
 uninterested by any thing not subservient to 
 immediate pursuits, that they 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 refer- 
 ence to that dreadful spectacle, as an example of 
 the consequences of the ignorance and wicked- 
 ness of a people, might have been heard with 
 unconcern, and lightly passed off as foreign to 
 the matters requiring their attention : it was all 
 over with the people dead, and the people alive 
 had their own concerns to mind. But would 
 not exactly such as these have been the men 
 most likely to fall into the vices and impieties 
 which would provoke the next avenging visita- 
 tion, and to perish in it ? In all times, the 
 
46 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 triflers with the great exemphfications of the 
 connexion of depravity with misery and ruin, 
 who thought it but an impertinent morah'zing 
 that attempted to recall such funereal spectacles 
 for admonition, were fools, whatever self-com- 
 placency they might feel in a habit of thinking 
 more fitted, they would perhaps say, for making 
 our best advantage of the world as we find it. 
 And we of the present time are convicted of 
 exceeding stupidity, if we think it not worth 
 while to go a number of ages back to contem- 
 plate the mass of mankind, the wide world of 
 beings such as ourselves, sunk in darkness and 
 wretchedness, and to consider what it is that is 
 taught by so melancholy an exhibition. What 
 is to give fulness of evidence to an instruction, 
 if a world be too narrow ; what is to give it 
 weight, if a world be too light ? 
 
 It is to be acknowledged, that the mental 
 darkness which we are representing as so greatly 
 the cause of the wickedness and unhappiness of 
 those nations of old, had the effect of protecting 
 them, in a measure, from some kinds of suffer- 
 ing. They had not, as we have been observing, 
 illumination enough, to have conscience enough, 
 for inflicting the severest pains of remorse ; and 
 for oppressing them with a distinct alarming 
 apprehension of a future account. But that they 
 were wretched, was practically acknowledged 
 in the very quality of what they ardently and 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 47 
 
 universally sought as the highest felicities of 
 existence. Those delights were violent and 
 tumultuous, in all possible ways and degrees 
 estranged from reflection, and adverse to it. 
 The whole souls of great and small, in the most 
 barbarous and in the more polished state, were 
 passionately set upon revelry, upon expedients 
 for inflaming the indulgences of licentiousness to 
 extravagance, madness, and monstrous enormity ; 
 upon concourses of multitudes for pomps, cele- 
 brations, shows, games, combats ; upon the riots 
 of exultation and revenge after victories. The 
 ruder nations had, in their way, however pitiable 
 in their attempts at magnificence, their grand 
 festive, triumphal, and demoniac confluxes and 
 revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people 
 of the savage and the more cultivated nations 
 sacrificed every thing belonging to the peaceful 
 economy of life, with a desperate frantic fury. 
 And all this was the confession that there was 
 little felicity in the heart or in the home. Nor 
 could all this be itself happiness : even if the 
 vain elation could be called so while it lasted, it 
 was brief in each instance, and it subsided in an 
 aggravated dreariness of the soul. 
 
 The fact of their being unhappy had a still 
 more gloomy attestation in the mutual enmity 
 which seems to have been of the very essence 
 of life, so vital a principle that it could not be 
 spared for an hour. No, they could not live 
 without this luxury drawn from the fountains of 
 
48 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 death ! What is the most conspicuous material 
 of ancient history, what is it that glares out the 
 most hideously from that darkness and obhvion 
 in which the old world is veiHng its aspect, but 
 the incessant furies of miserable mortals against 
 their fellow-mortals, " hateful and hating one 
 another?" We cannot look that way but we 
 see the whole field covered with inflicters and 
 sufferers, not seldom interchanging those cha- 
 racters. If that field widens to our view, it 
 is still, to the utmost line to which the shade 
 clears away, a scene of cruelty, oppression, and 
 slavery; of the strong trampling on the weak, 
 and the weak often attempting to bite at the feet 
 of the strong ; of rancorous animosities and 
 murderous competitions of persons raised above 
 the mass of the community ; of treacheries and 
 massacres ; and of war, between hordes, and 
 cities, and nations, and empires ; war never, in 
 spirit, intermitted, and suspended sometimes in 
 act only to acquire renewed force for destruc- 
 tion, or to find another assemblage of hated 
 creatures to cut in pieces. Powerful as *' the 
 spirit of the first-born Cain" has continued, 
 down to our own age, and in the most improved 
 division of mankind, there was nevertheless, in 
 the ancient pagan race, (as there is in some por- 
 tions of the modern,) a more complete, uncon- 
 trolled actuation of the all-killing, all-devouring 
 fury, a more absolute possession of Moloch. 
 Now it is as misery that we are exhibiting all 
 
ON POPULAR IGxNORANCE. 49 
 
 this depravity. To be thus, was suffering. The 
 disease and the pain are inseparable in the de- 
 scription, and they were so in the reahty. And 
 both together, inevitably seizing on beings who 
 had rejected or lost divine knowledge, maintained 
 a hold as fatal and invincible as that of the in- 
 tervolved serpents of Laocoon. 
 
 It is true, that a comprehensive estimate of 
 the state of the people we are contemplating, 
 would bring in view several minor circumstances 
 which, though not availing to change materially 
 the effect of the picture, are themselves of less 
 gloomy colour. But at the same time such an 
 estimate would include other forms also of in- 
 fehcity, besides those which were at once the 
 result and punishmentof depravity, the stings with 
 which sin rewarded the infatuation that loved it. 
 If the design had been to exhibit any thing like a 
 general view, we must have taken account of such 
 particulars as these : the unhappiness of being 
 without an assurance of an all-comprehending 
 and merciful Providence, and of wanting there- 
 fore the best support in sorrow and calamity ; 
 the insuppressible impatience, or the deep melan- 
 choly, with which the more thoughtful persons 
 must have seen departing from life, leaving them 
 hopeless of ever meeting again in a life else- 
 where, the relations or associates who were 
 dear to them in spite of the prevailing effect 
 of paganism to destroy philanthropy ; and the 
 gloomy sentiment with which they must have 
 
50 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 thought of their own continual approach toward 
 death ; a sentiment not always unaccompanied 
 with certain intimidating hints and hauntings of 
 possibilities in the darkness beyond that confine. 
 But the more limited intention in the preceding 
 description has been to illustrate their unhappi- 
 ness as inflicted by their depravity, after showing 
 how that depravity was a necessary consequence 
 of their ignorance. And what words so true, so 
 irresistibly prompted at the view of such a scene, 
 as those pronounced of a nation that at once 
 despised the pagans and imitated them, — " The 
 people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." 
 
 Let us not be suspected of having lost sight of 
 the fact, that vice and misery have, in our nature, 
 a deeper source than ignorance ; or of being so 
 absurd as to imagine that if the inestimable 
 truths unknown to the heathen world had been, 
 on the contrary, in all men's knowledge, but a 
 slight portion of the depravity and wretched- 
 ness we have described could then have had an 
 existence. To say, that under long absence 
 of the sun any tract of terrestrial nature must 
 infallibly be reduced to desolation, is not to say 
 or imply, that under the benignant influence of 
 that luminary the same region must, as neces- 
 sarily and unconditionally, be a scene of beauty ; 
 but the only hope, for the only possibility, is for 
 the field visited by much of that sweet influence. 
 And it were an absurdity no less gross in the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 51 
 
 opposite extreme to the one just mentioned, to 
 assert the uselessness, for rectifying the moral 
 world, of a diffusion of the knowledge which 
 shall compel men to see what is wrong ; to deny 
 that the impulses of the corrupt passions and 
 will must suffer some abatement of their force 
 and daring when encountered, like Balaam meet- 
 ing the angel, by a clear manifestation of their 
 bad and ruinous tendency, by a convinced judg- 
 ment, a protesting conscience, and the aspect 
 of the Almighty Judge, — instead of their being 
 under the tolerance of a judgment not instructed 
 to condemn them, or, (as ignorance is sure to 
 quicken into error,) perverted to abet them. 
 
 e2 
 
SECTION 11. 
 
 Brief review of the ignorance prevailing through the ages subsequent to 
 those of ancient history, — State of the popular mind in Christendom 
 during the complete reign of Popery. — Supposed reflections of a Pro- 
 testant in one of our ancient splendid structures for ecclesiastical use. — 
 Slow progress of the Reformation, in its effects on the understandings of 
 the people. — Their barbarous ignorance even in the time of Elizabeth, 
 notwithstanding the intellectual and literary glories of this country in 
 that period. — Sunk in ignorance still in the boasted age of Addison, 
 Pope, &c. — Strange insensibility of the cultivated part of the nation 
 with regard to the mental and moral condition of the rest.— Almost 
 heathen ignorance of Religion at the time when Whitefield and Wesley 
 began to excite the attention of the multitude to that subject. — Signs 
 and means of a change for the better in recent times. 
 
 From this view of the prevalence and mahg- 
 nant effects of ignorance among the people of 
 the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we 
 may come down, with a few brief notices in 
 passing over the long subsequent periods, toward 
 our own times. For any attempt to prosecute 
 the object through the ages and regions of later 
 heathenism, (with the infatuated Judaism still 
 more destructive to its subjects) would be to 
 lose ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, 
 an immense amplitude of darkness, frightfully 
 alive throughout with the activity of all noxious 
 and hideous things. 
 
 But by this time we are become aware how 
 continually we are driven upon what will be in 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. S3 
 
 hazard of appearing an exaggerated phraseology ; 
 insomuch that we are ahnost afraid of accept- 
 ing the epithets of description and aggravation 
 which offer themselves as most appropriate to the 
 subject. There are some very self-complacent 
 persons whose minds are so unapt to raise them- 
 selves to the greatness of any subject, or so 
 averse perhaps to the contemplation of it if it 
 be of tragical aspect, that strong terms accu- 
 mulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its 
 plain reality all the powers of language, offend 
 them as declamatory exaggeration. Let it then 
 be just observed, without one ambitious epithet, 
 that since that period when ancient history, 
 strictly so named, left off describing the state 
 of mankind, more than a myriad of millions of 
 our race have been on earth and quitted it with- 
 out one ray of the knowledge the most important 
 to spirits sojourning here, and going hence. 
 
 But while any attempt to carry the repre- 
 sentation of the fatal effects of ignorance over 
 the extent of so dreary a scene is declined, let 
 it not be forgotten that they have been an awful 
 reality ; that they have actually existed, in time, 
 and place, and number of victims ; that there 
 actually were the men, and so many men, who 
 exemplified, and in so many ways, the truth we 
 are illustrating. And a truth which has its 
 demonstration in facts ought to come with the 
 weight of all the facts that we believe ever did 
 demonstrate it. When they are not presented 
 
54 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE, 
 
 in breadth and detail prominently in our view 
 we are apt to lose the effect of our knowing 
 them to have existed. 
 
 It will be enough to advert very briefly to the 
 Mahomedan imposture, though that is perhaps 
 the most signal instance within all time, of a 
 mahgnant delusion maintained directly and im- 
 mediately by ignorance, by a solemn determina- 
 tion and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one 
 new idea. Tenets involving the most palpable 
 impossibiUties, and asserted in self-contradictory 
 terms, must stand inviolable to all question or 
 controversy ; literature must be scouted as a 
 profane folly ; not a principle of true philosophy 
 is to be admitted; hardly is an application of 
 the plainest mechanics to improve a machine or 
 implement to be tolerated; or an infidel pardoned 
 for a successful obtrusion of science to render 
 the most important service, — to save, for in- 
 stance, a Mussulman ship with its proud besotted 
 commander and crew from destruction,* lest one 
 momentary surmise of imperfection might insult 
 the all-sufficiency and sanctity of the unalterable 
 creed and institutes ; lest any diminutive crevice 
 should be made in the temple of the vile super- 
 stition, for the passage of one glimpse of true 
 light to annoy the foul fiend that dwells there, 
 invested " in the dunnest smoke of hell." Not, 
 however, that this is the policy of doubt and 
 
 * There is a very curious example of this mentioned in Dr. 
 Clarke's Travels. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 65 
 
 apprehension, the evading and repelling caution 
 of men who suspect themselves to be wrong 
 and dread being forced to meet the proof. For 
 the subjects of this execrable usurpation on 
 the human understanding have, in general, the 
 firmest assurance that all things in the system 
 are right : it has itself secured them against 
 knowing any thing that could discompose their 
 sense of certainty. No fell savage, or serpent, 
 or monster, ever had a more perfect instinct to 
 avail itself of an impervious obscurity for its 
 lurking place, than this imposture has shewn to 
 keep out all mental light from its realm. The 
 delusion is so strong and absolute in ignorance, 
 is so identified with it, and so systematically 
 repels at all points the approach of knowledge, 
 that it is difficult to conceive a mode of its exter- 
 mination that shall not involve some fearful de- 
 struction, in the most literal sense, of the people 
 whom it possesses. And such a catastrophe it 
 is probable the great body of them, in the temper 
 of mind prevailing among them at this hour, 
 would choose to incur by preference, we do not 
 say to a serious patient consideration of the 
 true religion, but even to the admission among 
 them of a system merely favouring knowledge 
 in general, an order of measures which should 
 urge upon the adults, and peremptorily enforce 
 for the children, a discipline of intellectual 
 improvement. There would be little national 
 hesitation of choice, (at least in the central 
 
56 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCEi 
 
 regions of the dominion of this hateful impos- 
 ture,) between the introduction of any general 
 system of expedients for driving them from 
 their stupefaction into something Hke thinking 
 and learning, and a general plague, to rage as 
 long as any remained for victims.* 
 
 But let us now look at the intellectual state 
 of the people denominated Christian, during the 
 ages preceding the Reformation. The best of 
 all the acquisitions by earth from heaven, Chris- 
 tianity, might have seemed to bring with it an 
 inevitable necessity of a great and permanent 
 difference soon to be effected in regard to the 
 competence of men's knowledge to prevent their 
 destruction. It was as if, in the physical system, 
 some one production, far more salutary to life 
 than all the other things furnished from the 
 elements, had been reserved by the Creator to 
 spring up in a later age, after many generations 
 of men had been languishing through life, and 
 prematurely dying, from the deficient virtue of 
 their sustenance and remedies. The image of 
 the inestimable plant had been shewn to the 
 prophets in their visions, but the reality was 
 
 * In the interval since this was written, that central domi- 
 nion has been hastening to its catastrophe with astonishing 
 rapidity. And the rising Egyptian state seems to promise the 
 patronage of elementary science, which may gradually open the 
 way for such knowledge as will contribute to sap the stability 
 of Mahomedan faith. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 57 
 
 now given to the world ; it was of " wholly a 
 right seed," '' had the seed in itself," and claimed 
 to be cultivated by the people, who in every 
 land were suffering the maladies which it had 
 the properties to heal. But, while by the greater 
 part of mankind it was not accounted worth 
 admission to a place on their blasted desolated 
 soil, the manner in which its virtue was frus- 
 trated among those who pretended to esteem 
 it, as it was, the best gift of the divine bene- 
 ficence, is recorded in eternal reproach of the 
 christian nations. 
 
 As the hostility of heathenism, in the direct 
 endeavours to extirpate the christian religion, 
 became evidently hopeless, in the nations within 
 the Roman empire, there was a grand change of 
 the policy of evil ; and all manner of reprobate 
 things, heathenism itself among them, rushed 
 as by general conspiracy into treacherous con- 
 junction with Christianity, retaining their own 
 quality under the sanction of its name, and by 
 a rapid process reducing it to surrender almost 
 every thing distinctive of it but that dishonoured 
 name : and all this under protection of the 
 " gross darkness covering the people." There 
 were indeed in existence the inspired oracles, 
 and these could not be essentially falsified. But 
 there was no lack of expedients and pretexts 
 for keeping them in a great measure secreted. 
 It might be done under a pretence that reve- 
 rence for their sanctity required they should 
 
58 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 be secluded as within the recesses of a temple, 
 nor be there consulted but by consecrated per- 
 sonages ; a pretence excellently contrived, since 
 it was its own security against exposure, the 
 people being thus kept unaware that the sacred 
 writings themselves expressly invited popular 
 inspection, by declaring themselves addressed 
 to mankind at large. The deceivers were not 
 worse off for the other facilities. In the pro- 
 gress of translation, the holy scriptures could 
 be intercepted and stopped short in a language 
 but little less unintelligible than the original 
 ones to the bulk of the people, in order that 
 this "profane vulgar" might never hear the very 
 words of God, but only such report as it should 
 please certain men, at their discretion, to give 
 of what he had said. But even though the 
 people had understood the language, in the 
 usage of social converse, there was a grand 
 security against them in keeping them so desti- 
 tute of the knowledge of letters that the Bible, 
 if such a rare thing ever did happen to fall into 
 any of their hands, would be no more to them 
 than a scroll of hieroglyphics. When to this 
 was added, the great cost of a copy of so large 
 a book before the invention of printing, it re- 
 mained perhaps just worth while, (and it would 
 be a matter of no difficulty or daring,) to make 
 it, in the maturity of the system, an offence, 
 and a sacrilegious invasion of sacerdotal privi- 
 lege, to look into a bible. If it might seem 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 59 
 
 hard thus to constitute a new sin, in addition 
 to the long list already denounced by the divine 
 law, amends were made by indulgently rescinding 
 some articles in that list, and qualifying the prin- 
 ciples of obligation with respect to them all. 
 
 In this latency of the sacred authorities, with- 
 drawn from all communication with the human 
 understanding, there were retained still many 
 of the terms and names belonging to religion. 
 They remained, but they remained only such as 
 they could be when the departing spirit of that 
 religion was leaving them void of their import 
 and solemnity, and so rendered applicable to 
 purposes of deception and mischief. They were 
 as holy vessels, in which the original contents 
 might, as they were escaping, be clandestinely 
 replaced by the most malignant preparations. 
 And as crafty and wicked men had a direct 
 interest in this substitution, the pernicious ope- 
 ration went on incessantly ; and with an ability, 
 and to an extent, evincing that the utmost 
 barbarism of the times cannot extinguish genius 
 when it is iniquity that sets it on fire. How 
 prolific was the invention of the falsehoods and 
 absurdities of notion, and of the vanities and 
 corruptions of practice, which it was devised to 
 make the terms and names of religion designate 
 and sanction ! while it was also managed, with 
 no less sedulity and success, that the inventors 
 and propagators should be held in submissive 
 reverence by the community, as the oracular 
 
60 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 depositaries of truth. That community had not 
 knowledge enough of any other kind, to create 
 a resisting and defensive power against this im- 
 position in the concern of rehgion. A sound 
 exercise of reason on subjects out of that pro- 
 vince, a moderate degree of instruction in litera- 
 ture and science rightly so called, might have 
 produced, in the persons of superior native 
 capacity, a competence to question, to examine, 
 to call for evidence, and to detect some of the 
 fallacies imposed for christian faith. But in such 
 completeness of ignorance, the general mind 
 was on all sides pressed and borne down to its 
 fate. All reaction ceased ; and the people were 
 reduced to exist in one huge, unintelligent, mo- 
 notonous substance, united by the interfusion of 
 a vile superstition, which permitted just enough 
 mental life in the mass to accommodate it to 
 all the uses of cheats and tyrants, — a proper 
 subject for the dominion of '^ our Lord God the 
 Pope," as he was sometimes denominated ; and 
 might have been denominated without exciting 
 indignation, in the hearing of millions of beings 
 bearing the form of men and the name of 
 Christians. 
 
 Reflect that all this took place under the 
 nominal ascendency of the best and brightest 
 economy of instruction from heaven. Reflect 
 that it was in nations where even the sovereign 
 authority professed homage to the religion of 
 Christ, and adopted and enforced it as a grand 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 61 
 
 national institution, that the popular mass was 
 thus reduced to a material fit for all the bad 
 uses to which priestcraft could wish to put the 
 souls and bodies of its slaves. And then consider 
 what should have been the condition of this great 
 aggregate, wherever Christianity was acknow- 
 ledged by all as the true religion. The people 
 should have consisted of so many beings having 
 each, in some degree, the independent beneficial 
 use of his mind ; all of them trained with a 
 reference to the necessity of their being apprised 
 of their responsibility to their Creator, for the 
 exercise of their reason on the matters of belief 
 and choice ; all of them capacitated for improve- 
 ment by being furnished with the rudiments and 
 instrumental means of knowledge; and all having 
 within their easy reach, in their own language, 
 the scriptures of divine truth. 
 
 Can any doubt arise, whether there were in 
 the christian states resources competent, if so 
 applied, to secure to all the people an elemen- 
 tary instruction, and the possession of the Bible ? 
 Resources competent! All nations, suflflciently 
 raised above barbarism to exist as states, have 
 in all ages consumed, in uses the most foreign 
 and pernicious to their welfare, an infinitely 
 greater amount of means than would have suf- 
 ficed, after due provision for comfortable physical 
 subsistence, to afford a moderate share of in- 
 struction to all the people. And in those popish 
 ages, that expenditure alone which w^ent to 
 
62 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 ecclesiastical use would have been far more than 
 adequate to this beneficent purpose. Think of 
 the boundless cost for supporting the magnifi- 
 cence and satiating the rapacity of the hierarchy, 
 from its triple-crowned head, down through all 
 the orders branded with a consecration under 
 that head to maintain the delusion and share 
 the spoil. Recollect the immense system of 
 policy for jurisdiction and intrigue, every agent 
 of which was a devourer. Recollect the pomps 
 and pageants, for which the general resources 
 were to be taxed; while the general industry 
 was injured by the interruption of useful employ- 
 ment, and the diversion of the people to such 
 dissipation as their condition qualified and per- 
 mitted them to indulge in. Think also of the 
 incalculable cost of ecclesiastical structures, the 
 temples of idolatry as in truth they were. One 
 of the most striking situations for a religious 
 and reflective protestant is, that of passing some 
 solitary hour under the lofty vault, among the 
 superb arches and columns, of any one of the 
 most splendid of these edifices remaining at this 
 day in our own country. If he has sensibility 
 and taste, the magnificence, the graceful union 
 of so many diverse inventions of art, the whole 
 mighty creation of genius that so many centuries 
 since quitted the world without leaving even a 
 name, will come with magical impression on his 
 mind, while it is contemplatively darkening into 
 the awe of antiquity. But he will be recalled, — 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 63 
 
 the sculptures, the inscriptions, the sanctuaries 
 enclosed off for the special benefit, after death, 
 of persons who had very different concerns 
 during life from that of the care of their salva- 
 tion, and various other insignia of the original 
 character of the place, will help to recall him, — 
 to the thought, that these proud piles were in 
 fact raised to celebrate the conquest, and prolong 
 the dominion, of the Power of Darkness over 
 the souls of the people. They were as triumphal 
 arches, erected in memorial of the extermination 
 of that truth which was given to be the life 
 of men. 
 
 As he looks round, and looks upward, on the 
 prodigy of design, and skill, and perseverance, 
 and tributary wealth, he may image to himself 
 the multitudes that, during successive ages, fre- 
 quented this fane in the assured belief, that the 
 idle ceremonies and impious superstitions, which 
 \f they there performed or witnessed, were a service 
 acceptable to heaven, and to be repaid in blessings 
 to the offerers. He may say to himself, Here, 
 on this very floor, under that elevated and de- 
 corated vault, in a " dim religious light" like 
 this, but with the darkness of the shadow of 
 death in their souls, they prostrated themselves 
 to their saints, or their " queen of heaven ;" 
 nay, to painted images and toys of wood or 
 wax, to some ounce or two of bread and wine, 
 to fragments of old bones, and rags of cast-off 
 vestments. Hither they came, when conscience. 
 
64 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 in looking back or pointing forward, dismayed 
 them, to purchase remission with money or 
 atoning penances, or to acquire the privilege of 
 sinning with impunity in a certain manner, or 
 for a certain time ; and they went out at yonder 
 door in the perfect confidence that the priest 
 had secured, in the one case the suspension, in 
 the other the satisfaction, of the divine law. 
 Here they solemnly believed, as they were 
 taught, that, by donatives to the church, they 
 delivered the souls of their departed sinful rela- 
 tions from their state of punishment ; and they 
 went out at that door resolved, such as had 
 possessions, to bequeath some portion of them, 
 to operate in the same manner for themselves 
 another day, in the highly probable case of 
 similar need. Here they were convened to 
 listen in reverence to some representative emis- 
 sary from the Man of Sin, with new dictates of 
 blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name 
 of the Almighty ; or to witness the trickery of 
 some detestable farce, devised to cheat or fright 
 them out of whatever remainder the former im- 
 positions might have left them of sense, con- 
 science, or property. Here, in fine, there was 
 never presented to their understanding, from 
 their childhood to their death, a comprehensive 
 honest declaration of the laws of duty, and the 
 pure doctrines of salvation. To think ! that they 
 should have mistaken for the house of God, and 
 the very gate of heaven, a place where the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 65 
 
 Regent of the nether world had so short a way 
 to come from his dominions, and his agents and 
 purchased slaves so short a way to go thither. 
 If we could imagine a momentary visit from 
 Him who once entered a fabric of sacred de- 
 nomination with a scourge, because it was made 
 the resort of a common traffic, with what aspect 
 and voice, with what infliction but the '' rebuke 
 with flames of fire," would he have entered this 
 mart of iniquity, assuming the name of his 
 sanctuary, where the traffic was in delusions, 
 crimes, and the souls of men ? It was even as 
 if, to use the prophet's language, the very 
 '' stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out 
 of the timber answered it," in denunciation ; for 
 a portion of the means of building, in the case 
 of some of these edifices, was obtained as the 
 price of dispensations and pardons.* 
 
 In such a hideous light would the earlier 
 history of one of these mighty structures, pre- 
 tendedly consecrated to Christianity, be pre- 
 sented to the reflecting protestant ; and then 
 would recur the idea of its cost, as relative to 
 what that expenditure might really have done 
 for Christianity and the people. It absorbed 
 in the construction, sums sufficient to have sup- 
 plied, costly as they would have been, even ma- 
 nuscript Bibles, in the people's own language, 
 (as a priesthood of truly apostolic character 
 
 * That most superb Salisbury Cathedral, for example, 
 F 
 
66 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 would have taken care the scriptures should 
 speak,) to all the families of a province ; and in 
 the revenues appropriated to its ministration of 
 superstition, enough to have provided men to 
 teach all those families to read those Bibles. 
 
 In all this, and in the whole constitutioh of 
 the Grand Apostasy, involving innumerable 
 forms of abuse and abomination to which our 
 object does not require any allusion, how sad a 
 spectacle is held forth of the people destroyed 
 for lack of knowledge. If, as one of their 
 plagues, an inferior one in itself, they were 
 plundered, as we have seen, of their worldly 
 goods, it was that the spoil might subserve to 
 a still gi'eater wrong. What was lost to the 
 accommodation of the body, was to be made to 
 contribute to the depravation of the spirit. It 
 supplied means for multiplying the powers of 
 the grand ecclesiastical machinery, and confirm- 
 ing the intellectual despotism of the usurpers of 
 spiritual authority. Those authorities enforced 
 on the people, on pain of perdition, an acqui- 
 escence in notions and ordinances which, in 
 effect, precluded their direct access to the 
 Almighty, and the Saviour of the world, inter- 
 posing between them and the Divine Majesty 
 a very extensive, complicated, and heathenish 
 mediation, which in a great measure substituted 
 itself for the real and exclusive mediation of 
 Christ, obscured by its vast creation of inter- 
 cepting vanities the glory of the Eternal Being, 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 67 
 
 and thus almost extinguished the true worship. 
 But how calamitous was such a condition ! — 
 to be thus intercepted from direct intercourse 
 with the Supreme Spirit, and to have the solemn 
 and elevating sentiment of devotion flung down- 
 waM, on objects to some of which even the 
 most superstitious could not pay homage with- 
 out a sense of degradation. 
 
 It was, again, a disastrous thing to be under 
 a directory of practical life framed for the con- 
 venience of a corrupt system ; a rule which 
 enjoined many things wrong, allowed a dis- 
 pensation from every thing that was right, and 
 abrogated the essential principle and ground- 
 work of true morality. Still again, it was an 
 unhappy thing, that the consolations in sorrow 
 and the view of death should either be too 
 feeble to animate, or should animate only by 
 deluding. And it was the consummation of evil 
 in the state of the people of those dark ages, 
 it was, emphatically, to be " destroyed," that 
 the great doctrines of redemption should have 
 been essentially vitiated or formally supplanted, 
 so that multitudes of the people were betrayed 
 to rest their final hopes on a ground un- 
 authorized by the Judge of the world. In this 
 most important matter, the spiritual authorities 
 might themselves be subjects of the fatal de- 
 lusion in which they held the community ; and 
 well they deserved to be so, in judicial retri- 
 bution of their wickedness in imposing on the 
 
 f2 
 
GS ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 people, deliberately and on system, innumerable 
 things which they knew to be false. 
 
 We have often mused, and felt a gloom and 
 dreariness spreading over the mind while mus- 
 ing, on descriptions of the aspect of a country 
 after a pestilence has left it in desolation, or 
 of a region where the people are perishing by 
 famine. It has seemed a mournful thing to 
 behold, in contemplation, the multitude of life- 
 less forms, occupying in silence the same abodes 
 in which they had lived, or scattered upon the 
 gardens, fields, and roads ; and then to see the 
 countenances of the beings yet languishing in 
 life, looking despair, and impressed with the 
 signs of approaching death. We have even 
 sometimes had the vivid and horrid picture 
 offered to our imagination, of a number of 
 human creatures shut up by their fellow-mortals 
 in some strong hold, under an entire privation 
 of sustenance ; and presenting each day their 
 imploring, or infuriated, or grimly sullen, or 
 more calmly woeful countenances, at the iron 
 and impregnable grates ; each succeeding day 
 more haggard, more perfect in the image of 
 despair ; and after a while appearing each day 
 one fewer, till at last all have sunk. Now shall 
 we feel it as a relief to turn in thought, as to 
 a sight of less portentous evil, from the inha- 
 bitants of a country, or from those of such an 
 accursed prison-house, thus pining away, to 
 behold the different spectacle of national tribes. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 6§ 
 
 or any more limited portion of mankind, on 
 whose minds are displayed the full effects of 
 knowledge denied ; who are under the process 
 of whatever destruction it is, that spirits can 
 suffer from want of the vital aliment to the 
 intelligent nature, especially from " a famine of 
 the words of the Lord?" 
 
 To bring the two to a close comparison, 
 suppose the case, that some of the persons 
 thus doomed to perish in the tower were in pos- 
 session of the genuine light and consolations 
 of Christianity, perhaps even had actually been 
 adjudged to this fate, (no extravagant supposi- 
 tion,) for zealously and persistingly endeavour- 
 ing the restoration of the purity of that religion 
 to the deluded community. Let it be supposed 
 that numbers of that community, having con- 
 spired to obtain this adjudgment, frequented 
 the precincts of the fortress to see their victims 
 gradually perishing. It would be perfectly in 
 the spirit of the popish superstition, that they 
 should beheve themselves to have done God 
 service, and be accordingly pleased at the sight 
 of the more and more deathlike aspect of the 
 emaciated countenances. The while, they might 
 be themselves in the enjoyment of *' fulness of 
 bread." We can imagine them making convivial 
 appointments within sight of the prison grates, 
 and going from the spectacle to meet at the 
 banquet. Or they might delay the festivity, in 
 order to have the additional luxury of knowing 
 
70 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 that the tragedy was consummated ; as Bishop 
 Gardiner would not dine till the martyrs were 
 burnt. — Look at these two contemporary situa- 
 tions, that of the persons with truth and im- 
 mortal hope in their spirits, enduring this slow 
 and painful reduction of their bodies to dissolu- 
 tion, — and that of those who, while their bodies 
 fared sumptuously, were thus miserably perish- 
 ing in soul, through its being surrendered to the 
 curse of a delusion which envenomed it with 
 such a deadly malignity: and say which was the 
 more calamitous predicament. 
 
 If we have no hesitation in pronouncing, let 
 us consider whether we have ever been grateful 
 enough to God for the dashing in pieces so long 
 since, in this land, of a system which maintains, 
 to this hour, much of its stability over the 
 greater part of Christendom. If we regret that 
 certain fragments of it are still held in venera- 
 tion here, and that so tedious a length of ages 
 should be required, to work out a complete 
 mental rescue from the infatuation which pos- 
 sessed our ancestors, let us at the same time 
 look at the various states of Europe, small and 
 great, where this superstition continues to hold 
 the minds of the people in its odious grasp; 
 and verify to ourselves what we have to be 
 thankful for, by thinking what reception our 
 minds would give to an offer of subsistence on 
 their mummeries, masses, absolutions, legends, 
 relics, mediation of saints, and corruptions. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 71 
 
 even to complete reversal, of the evangelic 
 doctrines. 
 
 It was, hov^ever, but very slowly that the \h,x'^''' 
 people of our land realized the benefits of "~^ 
 the Reformation, glorious as that event was, 
 regarded as to its progressive and its ultimate 
 consequences. Indeed, the thickness of the pre- 
 ceding darkness was strikingly manifested by the 
 deep shade which still continued stretched over 
 the nation, in spite of the newly risen luminary, 
 whose beams lost their brightness in pervading 
 it to reach the popular mind, and came with the 
 faintness of an obscured and tedious dawn. 
 
 A long time there lingered enough of night 
 for the evil spirit of popery to be at large and 
 in power, not abashed, as Milton represents 
 the Evil Angel on his being surprised by the 
 guardians of paradise. Rather the case was 
 that the vindictator itself of truth and holiness, 
 the true Lucifer, shrunk at the rencounter and 
 defiance of the old possessor of the gloomy do- 
 minion. The Reformation was not empowered 
 to speak with a voice like that which said. Let 
 there be light — and there was light. Consider 
 what, on its avowed national adoption in our 
 land, were its provisions for acting on the com- 
 munity, and how slow and partial must have 
 been their efficacy, for either the dissipation of 
 ignorance in general, or the riddance of that 
 worst part of it which had thickened round 
 
72 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the Romish delusion, as mahgnant a pestilence 
 as ever walked in darkness. There was an 
 alteration of formularies, a curtailment of rites, 
 a declaration of renouncing, in the name of 
 the church and state, the most palpable of the 
 absurdities; and a change, in some instances, 
 of the persons, but in very many others of the 
 professions merely, of the hierarchy. Such 
 were the appointments and instrumentality, for 
 carrying an innovation of opinions and practices 
 through a nation in which the profoundest 
 ignorance and the most inveterate superstition 
 fortified each other. And we may w^ell imagine 
 how fast and how far they would be effective, 
 to convey information and conviction among a 
 people whose reason had been just so much the 
 worse, with respect to religion at least, as it had 
 not been absolutely dormant ; and who were too 
 illiterate to be ever the wiser for the volume of 
 inspiration itself, had it been, in their native lan- 
 guage, in every house, instead of being scarcely 
 in one house in five hundred. 
 
 Doubtless some advantage was gained through 
 this change of institutions, by the abolition of so 
 much of the authority of the spiritual despotism 
 as it possessed in virtue of being the imperative 
 national establishment. And if, under this relax- 
 ation of its grasp, a number of persons declined 
 and escaped into the new faith they hardly knew 
 how or w^hy, it was a very good thing. It was 
 happy to make the transition on any termSj, with 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 73 
 
 however little of the exercise of reason, with 
 however little of reason to be exercised. It was 
 well to be on the right ground, though a man 
 had come thither like one conveyed while partly 
 asleep. To have grown to a state of mind in 
 which he ceased and refused to worship relics 
 and wafers, to rest his confidence on penance 
 and priestly absolution, and to regard the Virgin 
 and saints as in effect the supreme regency of 
 heaven, was a valuable alteration though he 
 could not read, and though he could not assign, 
 and had not clearly apprehended, the arguments 
 which justified the change. Yes, this would be 
 an important thing gained ; but not even thus 
 much was gained to the passive slaves of popery 
 but in an exceedingly limited degree, during a 
 long course of time after it was supplanted as 
 a national institution. It continued to maintain 
 in the faith, feelings, and more private habits of 
 the people, a dominion but little enfeebled by the 
 necessity of dissimulation in public observances. 
 As far as to secure this exterior show of sub- 
 mission and conformity, it was an excellent 
 argument that the state had decreed, and would 
 resolutely enforce, a change in rehgion, — that is 
 to say, till it should be the sovereign pleasure 
 of the next monarch, readily seconded by a 
 majority of the ecclesiastics, just to turn the 
 whole affair round to its former position. But 
 the argument would expend nearly its whole 
 strength upon this policy of saving appearances. 
 
74 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 For what was there conveyed in it that could 
 strike inward to act upon the fixed tenets of the 
 mind, to destroy there the effect of the earhest 
 and ten thousand subsequent impressions, of 
 inveterate habit, and of ancient estabhshment ? 
 Was it to convince and persuade by authority 
 of the maxim, that the government in church 
 and state is wiser than the people, and there- 
 fore the best judge in every matter ? This, as 
 asserted generally, was what the people firmly 
 believed : it has always till lately been the 
 popular faith. But then, was the benefit of this 
 obsequious faith to go exclusively to the govern- 
 ment of just that particular time, — a government 
 which, by its innovations and demolitions, was 
 exhibiting a contemptuous dissent from all past 
 government remembered in the land ? Were 
 the people not to hesitate a moment to take 
 this innovating government's word for it that 
 all their forefathers, up through a long series of 
 ages, had been fools and dupes in reverencing, 
 in their time, the wisdom and authority of their 
 governors ? The most unthinking and sub- 
 missive would feel that this was too much ; 
 especially after they had seen proof that the 
 government demanding so prodigious a con- 
 cession might, on the substitution of just one 
 individual for another at its head, revoke its 
 own last year's ordinances, and punish those 
 who should contumaciously continue to be ruled 
 by them. You summon us, they might have 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 75 
 
 said to their governors, at your arbitrary dictate 
 to renounce, as what you are pleased to call 
 idolatries and abominations, the faith and rites 
 held sacred by twenty generations of our an- 
 cestors and yours. We are to do this on peril 
 of your highest displeasure, and that of God, by 
 whose will you are professing to act ; now who 
 wall ensure us that, within a few months, there 
 may not be a vindictive inquisition to find who 
 among us have been the most ready of obedi- 
 ence to offer wicked insult to the Holy Catholic 
 Apostolic Church ? 
 
 This deficiency of the moral power of the 
 government, to promote the progress of convic- 
 tion in the mind of the nation, would be slen- 
 derly supplied by the authority of the class next 
 to the government in the claim to deference, 
 and even holding the precedence in actual 
 influence, — that is, the families of rank and 
 consequence throughout the country. For the 
 people well knew, in their respective neighbour- 
 hoods, that many of these had never in reahty 
 forsaken the ancient religion, and that some of 
 them hardly attempted or wished to conceal 
 from their inferiors that they preserved their 
 fidelity. And then the substituted religion, 
 while it came with so little effectual aid of the 
 ascendent portion of the community, had also 
 lost much of the pomp which is always the 
 delight of the ignorant ; and it acknowledged, — 
 it proclaimed as one of its chief merits, — a still 
 
76 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 more fatal defect for attracting converts from 
 among beings whose ignorance had never been 
 suffered to doubt, till then, that men in eccle- 
 siastical garb could modify, or suspend, or defeat 
 for them the justice of God ; it proclaimed itself 
 unable to give any exemptions or commutations 
 in matters of conscience. 
 
 When such were the recommendations which 
 the new mode of religion had 7iot, and when 
 the recommendation which it had was simply 
 an offer of evidence to the understanding that 
 it was true, no wonder that many of the beings 
 so insensate through ignorance should never 
 become its proselytes. But even as to those 
 who did, while it was a happy deliverance, 
 as we have said, to escape on almost any 
 terms from the utter grossness of popery, still 
 they would carry into their better faith much 
 of the unhappy effect of that previous mental 
 debasement. How should a man in the rude- 
 ness of an intellect left completely ignorant of 
 truth in general, have a luminous apprehension 
 of its most important division ? There could 
 not be in men's minds a phenomenon similar to 
 what we image to ourselves of Goshen in the 
 preternatural night of Egypt, a space of perfect 
 light, defined out by a precise limit amidst the 
 general darkness. 
 
 Only consider, that the new ideas admitted 
 into the proselyte's understanding as the true 
 faith, were to take their situation there in nearly 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 77 
 
 those very same encompassing circumstances of 
 internal barbarism which had been so perfectly 
 commodious to the superstition recently dwell- 
 ing there ; and that which had been favourable 
 and adapted in the utmost degree, that which 
 had afforded much of the sustenance of life, to 
 the false notions, could not but be most adverse 
 to the development of the true ones. These 
 latter, so environed, would be in a condition too 
 like that of a candle in the mephitic air of a 
 vault. The newly adopted rehgion, therefore, 
 of the uncultivated converts from popery, would 
 be far from exhibiting, as compared with the 
 renounced superstition, a magnitude of change, 
 and force of contrast, duly corresponding to the 
 difference between the lying vanities of priest- 
 craft and a communication from the living God. 
 The reign of ignorance combined with impos- 
 ture had fixed upon the common people of the 
 age of the Reformation, and of several gene- 
 rations downward, the doom of being incapable 
 of admitting genuine Christianity but with an 
 excessively inadequate apprehension of its attri- 
 butes ; — as in the patriarchal ages a man might 
 have received with only the honours appropriate 
 to a saint or prophet, the visitant in whom he 
 was entertaining an angel unawares. Happy 
 for both that ancient entertainer of such a 
 visitant, and the ignorant but honest adopter 
 of the reformed religion, when that which they 
 entertained rewarded them according to its own 
 
78 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 celestial quality, rather than in proportion to 
 their inadequate reception. We may believe 
 that the Divine Being, in special compassion to 
 that ignorance to which barbarism and super- 
 stition had condemned inevitably the early con- 
 verts to the reformed religion, did render that 
 faith beneficial to them beyond the proportion 
 of their narrow and still half superstitious con- 
 ception of it. And this is, in truth, the con- 
 sideration the most consolatory in looking on 
 the dreary scene of the period in which popery 
 was slowly retiring, with a protracted exertion 
 of all the craft and strength of an able tyrant 
 contending to the last for prolonged dominion. 
 
 This, however, is the alleviating circumstance 
 which is the least apt to occur to our thoughts. 
 It is no such consideration that usually presents 
 itself to extenuate in our view the gloom of that 
 age. Indeed our unreflecting attention allows 
 itself to be so engrossed by far different circum- 
 stances of that period of our history, as to leave 
 us no perception that the scene was gloomy. 
 For what is it but a splendid and animating 
 exhibition that we see in looking back to the 
 age of Elizabeth ? 
 
 And was not that, it may be asked, an age of 
 the highest glory to our nation? What con- 
 ceivable reason is there why we should repress 
 our dehght in contemplating it ? How can we 
 refuse to indulge an inspiring sympathy with 
 the energy of those times, an elation of spirit 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 79 
 
 at beholding the unparalleled allotment to her 
 reign, of statesmen, heroes, and literary geniuses, 
 but for whom, indeed, " that bright occidental 
 star " would have left no such brilhant track of 
 fame behind her ? 
 
 Permit us to answer by inquiring. What 
 should the intellectual condition of the people, 
 properly so denominated, have been in order to 
 correspond in a due proportion to the magnifi- 
 cence of these their representative chiefs, and 
 complete the grand spectacle as the spectacle 
 of a nation ? Determine that ; and then inquire 
 what actually was the state of the people all this 
 while. There is evidence that it was, what the 
 infernal blight and blast of popery might be 
 expected to have left it, generally and most 
 wretchedly degraded. What it was is shewn 
 by the facts, that it was found impossible, 
 even under the inspiring auspices of the learned 
 Elizabeth, with her constellation of geniuses, 
 orators, scholars, to supply the churches gene- 
 rally with officiating persons capable of going 
 with decency through the task of the public 
 service, made ready, as every part of it was, to 
 their hands ; and that to be able to read, was 
 the very marked distinction of here and there an 
 individual. It requires little effort but that of 
 going low enough, to complete the general 
 account in conformity to these and similar facts. 
 And here we cannot help remarking what a 
 deception we suffer to pass on us from history. 
 
80 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 It celebrates some period in a nation's career 
 as pre-eminently illustrious, for magnanimity, 
 lofty enterprise, literature, and original genius. 
 There was perhaps a learned and vigorous 
 monarch, and there were Cecils and Walsing- 
 hams, and Shakspeares and Spensers, and Sid- 
 neys and Raleigh s, with many other powerful 
 thinkers and actors, to render it the proudest 
 age of our national glory. And we thought- 
 lessly admit on our imagination this splendid 
 exhibition as in some manner involving or im- 
 plying the collective state of the people in that 
 age! The ethereal summits of a tract of the 
 moral world are conspicuous and fair in the 
 lustre of heaven, and we take no thought of the 
 immensely greater proportion of it which is 
 sunk in gloom and covered with fogs. The 
 general mass of the population, whose physical 
 vigour, indeed, and courage, and fidelity to the 
 interests of the country, were of such admirable 
 avail to the purposes, and under the direction, 
 of the mighty spirits that wielded their rough 
 agency, — this great assemblage was sunk in 
 such mental barbarism, as to be placed at about 
 the same distance from their illustrious intel- 
 lectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the 
 finest spirits of Athens. It was nothing to this 
 debased countless multitude spread over the 
 country, existing in the coarsest habits, desti- 
 tute, in the proportion of thousands to one, of 
 cultivation, and still in a great degree enslaved 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 81 
 
 by the popish superstition, — it was nothing to 
 them, in the way of direct influence to draw 
 forth their minds into free exercise and acquire- 
 ment, that there were, within the circuit of the 
 island, a profound scholarship, a most discipUned 
 and vigorous reason, a masculine eloquence, and 
 genius breathing enchantment. Both the actual 
 possessors of this mental opulence, and the part 
 of society forming, around them, the sphere 
 immediately pervaded by the delight and in- 
 struction imparted by them, might as well, for 
 any thing they diffused of this luxury and benefit 
 among the general multitude, have been a Brah- 
 minical caste, dissociated by an imagined essen- 
 tial distinction of nature. While they were 
 exulting in this elevation and free excursiveness 
 of mental existence, the prostrate crowd were 
 grovelling through a life on a level with the soil 
 where they were at last to find their graves. 
 But this crowd it was that constituted the sub- 
 stance of the nation ; to which nation, in the 
 mass, the historian applies the superb epithets, 
 which a small proportion of the men of that age 
 claimed by a striking exception to the general 
 state of the community. History too much con- 
 sults our love of effect and pomp, to let us see 
 in a close and distinct manner any thing 
 
 " On the low level of th' inglorious throng ; " 
 
 and our attention is borne away to the intel- 
 lectual splendour exhibited among the most 
 
82 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 favoured aspirants of the seats of learning, or 
 in councils, courts, and camps, in heroic and 
 romantic enterprises, and in some immortal 
 works of genius. And thus we are gazing with 
 delight at a prodigious public bonfire, while, in 
 all the cottages round, the people are shivering 
 for want of fuel. 
 
 Our history becomes very bright again with 
 the intellectual and literary riches of a much 
 later period, often denominated a golden age, — 
 that which was illustrated by the talents of 
 Addison, Pope, Swift, and their numerous secon- 
 daries in fame ; and could also boast its phi- 
 losophers, statesmen, and heroes. And in the 
 lapse of four or five ages, according to the 
 average term of human life, since the earlier 
 grand display of mind, what had been effected 
 toward such an advancement of intelligence in 
 the community, that when this next tribe of 
 highly efidowed spirits should appear, they would 
 stand in much less opprobrious contrast to the 
 main body of the nation, and find a much larger 
 portion of it quahfied to receive their intellectual 
 effusions ? By this time, the class of persons 
 who sought knowledge on a wider scale than 
 what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of life, who 
 took an interest in literature, and constituted 
 the Authors' Public, had indeed extended a little, 
 extremely little, beyond the people of condition, 
 the persons educated in learned institutions, and 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 83 
 
 those whose professions involved some necessity, 
 and might create some taste, for reading. Still 
 they were a class, and that with a limitation 
 marked and palpable, to a degree very difficult 
 for us now to conceive. They were in contact, 
 on the one side, with the great thinkers, moral- 
 ists, poets, and wit§, but very slightly in com- 
 munication with the generality of the people on 
 the other. They received the emanations from 
 the assemblage of talent and knowledge, but did 
 not serve as conductors to convey them down 
 indefinitely into the community. The national 
 body, regarded in its intellectual character, had 
 an inspirited and vigorous superior part, as con- 
 stituted of these men of eminent talents and 
 attainments, and this small class of persons in 
 a measure assimilated to them in thinking and 
 taste ; but it was in a condition resembling that 
 of a human frame in which, (through an injury 
 in the spinal marrow,) some of the most im- 
 portant functions of vitahty have terminated at 
 some precise limit downward, leaving the inferior 
 extremities devoid of sensation and the power of 
 action. 
 
 It is on record, that works admirably adapted 
 to find readers and to make them, had but an 
 extremely confined and slowly widening circu- 
 lation, according to our standard of the popular 
 success of the productions of distinguished ge- 
 nius. Nor did the writers reckon on any such 
 popular success. In the calculations of their 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 literary ambition, it was a thing of course that 
 the people went for nothing. It is apparent in 
 allusions to the people occurring in these very 
 works, that " the lower sort," " the vulgar herd," 
 " the canaille,'' " the mob," " the many-headed 
 beast," " the miUion," (and even these desig- 
 nations generally meant something short of the 
 lowest classes of all,) were no more thought of 
 in any relation to a state of cultivated intelli- 
 gence than Turks or Tartars. The readers are 
 habitually recognised as a kind of select com- 
 munity, conversed with on topics and in a 
 language with which the vulgar have nothing at 
 all to do, — a converse the more gratifying on 
 that account. And any casual allusions to the 
 bulk of the people are expressed in phrases un- 
 affectedly implying, that they are a herd of 
 beings existing on quite other terms, and for 
 essentially other ends, than we, fine writers, and 
 you, our admiring readers. It is evident in our 
 literature of that age, (a feature still more promi- 
 nent in that of France, at the same and down to 
 a much later period,) that the main national 
 population, accounted as creatures to which 
 souls and senses were given just to render their 
 limbs mechanically serviceable, were regarded by 
 the intellectual aristocracy with hardly so active 
 a sentiment as contempt ; they were not worth 
 that; it was the easy indifference toward what 
 was seldom thought of as in existence. 
 
 Wickedly wrong as such a feeling was. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 85 
 
 there is no doubt that the actual state of the 
 people was quite such as would naturally cause 
 it, in men whose large and richly cultivated 
 minds did not contain philanthropy or christian 
 charity enough to regret and pity the popular 
 debasement as a calamity. For while they 
 were indulging their pride in the elevation, and 
 their taste in all the luxuries and varieties, of 
 that ampler higher range of existence enjoyed 
 by such men, in what light would they view 
 the bulk of the nation, but as a coarse mass 
 of living material, what they would regard as 
 the mere earthy substratum of humanity, not 
 to be accounted of in any comparison or even 
 relation to what man is in his higher style ? / 
 While they of that higher style were revelling 
 in their mental affluence, the vast majority of 
 the inhabitants of the island were reduced to 
 subsist on the most beggarly pittance on which 
 mind could be barely kept alive. Probably 
 they had still fewer ideas than the people of 
 the former age which we have been describing. 
 For many of those with which popery had 
 occupied the faith and fancy of that earlier 
 generation, had now vanished from the popular 
 mind, without being replaced in equal num- 
 ber by better ideas, or by ideas of any kind. 
 And then their vices had the whole grossness 
 of vice, and their favourite amusements were 
 at best rude and boisterous, and a large pro- 
 portion of them savage and cruel. So that 
 
86 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 when we look at the shining wits, poets, and 
 philosophers, of that age, they appear like 
 gaudy flowers growing in a putrid marsh. 
 
 And to a much later period this deplo- 
 rable ignorance, with all its appropriate con- 
 sequences, continued to be the dishonour and 
 the plague of the intellectual and moral con- 
 dition of the inhabitants of England. Of 
 England ! which had through many centuries 
 made so great a figure in Christendom ; which 
 has been so splendid in arms, liberty, legisla- 
 tion, science, and all manner of literature ; 
 which has boasted its universities, of ancient 
 foundation and proudest fame, munificently 
 endowed, and possessing, in their accumu- 
 lations of literary treasure, nearly the whole 
 results of all the strongest thinking there had 
 been in the world ; and which has had also, 
 through the charity of individuals, such a 
 number of minor institutions for education, 
 that the persons entrusted to see them admi- 
 nistered have in very numerous instances not 
 scrupled to divert their resources to totally 
 different purposes, lest, perchance, the cause 
 of damage to the people should change from 
 a lack of knowledge to a repletion of it. Of 
 England! so long after the Reformation, and 
 all the while under the superintendence and 
 tuition of an ecclesiastical establishment for 
 both instruction and jurisdiction, co-extended 
 with the entire nation, and furnished for its 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 87 
 
 ministry with men from the discipline of in- 
 stitutions where every thing the most important 
 to be known was professed to be taught. Thus 
 endowed had England been, thus was she en- 
 dowed at the period under our review, (the 
 former part of the last century,) with the 
 facilities, the provisions, the great intellectual 
 apparatus, to be wielded in any mode her 
 wisdom might devise, and with whatever 
 strength of hand she chose to apply, for pro- 
 moting her several millions of rational, ac- 
 countable, immortal beings, somewhat beyond 
 a state of mere physical existence. When 
 therefore, notwithstanding all this, an awful 
 proportion of them were under the continual 
 process of destruction for want of knowledge, 
 what a tremendous responsibility was borne, 
 whether consciously or insensibly, by what- 
 ever part of the community it was that stood, 
 either by office and express vocation, or by 
 the general obhgation inseparable from ability, 
 in the relation of guardianship to the rest. 
 
 But here the voice of that kind of patriotism 
 which is in vogue both in England and China, 
 may be expected to interpose, and say. There 
 is a malicious or wanton spirit of exaggeration 
 and invective in all this. It is not to be 
 believed that there could be such grievous 
 calamity to the people, or such wicked mis- 
 conduct on the part of their guardians, as 
 
88 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 this declamation would represent, in any state 
 of society which the combined power, wealth, 
 intelligence and religion of England so long 
 tranquilly suffered to continue. England has 
 been a nation breathing another spirit than to 
 tolerate long any gross moral deformity which 
 her utmost energy could remove or modify. 
 
 Alas! this would be a thoughtless and rash 
 encomium, even though there were not the 
 opprobrious fact in question standing in di- 
 rect contradiction to it. There is no saying 
 what a civilized and christian nation, (so called,) 
 may not tolerate. Recollect the Slave Trade, 
 which, with the magnitude of a national concern, 
 continued its abominations while one generation 
 after another of Englishmen passed away ; and 
 the united illumination, conscience, and power 
 of the country, maintained as faithful a peace 
 with it as if the divine anger had been appre- 
 hended against whatever should threaten to 
 interfere with it. This is but one of many mor- 
 tifying illustrations how much the constitution 
 of our moral sentiments resembles a Manichaean 
 creation, how much of them is formed in passive 
 submission to the evil principle, acting through 
 prevailing custom ; which determines that it 
 shall but very partially depend on the real and 
 most manifest qualities of things presented to us, 
 whether we shall have any right perception of 
 the characters of good and evil. The agency 
 which works this mal-formation in our senti- 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 89 
 
 merits needs no greater triumph, than that the 
 true nature of things should be disguised to us 
 by the very effect of their being constantly kept 
 in our sight. Could any malignant enchanter 
 wish for more than this, — to make us insensible 
 to the odious quality of things not only though 
 they stand constantly and directly in our view, 
 but because they do so ? And while they do so, 
 there may also stand as obviously in our view, 
 and close by them, the truths which expose their 
 real nature, and might be expected to make us 
 instantly revolt from them; and these truths 
 shall be no other than some of the plainest 
 principles of reason and religion. It shall be as 
 if men of wicked designs could be compelled to 
 wear labels on their breasts wherever they go, 
 to announce their character in conspicuous let- 
 ters ; or nightly assassins could be forced to 
 carry torches before them, to reveal the mur- 
 derer in their visages ; or as if, according to a 
 vulgar superstition, evil spirits could not help 
 betraying their dangerous presence by a tinge 
 of brimstone in the flame of the lamps. Thus 
 evident, by the light of reason and religion, shall 
 have been the true nature of certain important facts 
 in the policy of a christian nation ; and never- 
 theless, even the cultivated part of that nation, 
 during a series of generations, having directly 
 before their sight an enormous nuisance and 
 iniquity, shall yet never be struck with its quality, 
 never be made restless by its annoyance, never 
 
90 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 seriously think of it. And so its odiousness shall 
 never be decidedly apprehended till some indi- 
 vidual or two, as by the acquisition of a new 
 moral sense, receive a sudden intuition of its 
 nature, a disclosure of its whole essence and 
 malignity, — the essence and malignity of that 
 very thing which has been exposing its quality, 
 without the least reserve, by the most flagrant 
 signs, to millions of observers. 
 
 Thus it has been with respect to the barbarous 
 ignorance under which nine-tenths of the popu- 
 lation of our country have continued, through a 
 number of ages subsequent to the Reformation, 
 surrendered to every thing low, vicious, and 
 wretched. This state of national debasement 
 and dishonour lay spread out, a wide scene of 
 moral desolation, in the sight of statesmen, of 
 dignified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of magis- 
 trates, of the philosophic observers of man as 
 he is, and of all those whose rank and opulence 
 brought them hourly proofs what great influence 
 they might have, in any way in which they should 
 choose to exert it, on the people below them. 
 And still it was all right that the multitudes, 
 constituting the grand living agency through the 
 realm, should remain in such a condition that, 
 when they died, the country should lose nothing 
 but so much animated body, with the quantum 
 of vice which helped to keep it in action. When 
 at length some were beginning to apprehend and 
 proclaim that all this was wrong, these classes 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 91 
 
 were exceedingly slow in their assent to the 
 reformed doctrine. A large proportion of them 
 even declared, on system, against the specula- 
 tions and projects for giving the people, at last, 
 the use and value of their souls as well as their 
 hands. The earnest and sanguine philanthropists 
 might be pardoned the simplicity of not fore- 
 seeing such an opposition, though they ought 
 perhaps to have known better than to be sur- 
 prised at the phenomenon. They were to be 
 made wiser by force, with respect to men's 
 governing prejudices and motives. So ungra- 
 cious a manner of having the insight into motives 
 sharpened, does not tend to make its subsequent 
 exercise indulgent, when it comes to inspect the 
 altered appearances assumed by persons and 
 classes who have previously been in decided 
 opposition. What arguments have prevailed 
 with you, (the suspicious question might be,) 
 since you have never frankly retracted your 
 former contempt of those which convinced us 9 
 May any sinister thought have occurred, that 
 you might defeat our ends by a certain way of 
 managing the means ? Or do you hope to de- 
 termine and limit to some subordinate purposes, 
 what we wish to prosecute for the most general 
 good? Or would you rather impose on your- 
 selves the grievance of promoting an object which 
 you dislike, than that we should have the chief 
 credit of promoting it ? Do you sometimes 
 accompany your working in the vineyard with 
 
92 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 maledictions on those who have reduced you to 
 such a necessity ? Would you have been glad 
 to be saved the unwelcome service by their 
 letting it alone ? 
 
 Those friends of man and their country who 
 were the earliest to combine in schemes for 
 enlightening the people, and who continue to 
 prosecute the object on the most liberal and 
 comprehensive principle, have to acknowledge 
 surmises like these. Nevertheless, they are 
 willing to forego any shrewd investigation into 
 the causes of the later silence and apparent 
 acquiescence of former opposers ; and into the 
 motives which have induced some of them, 
 though in no very amicable mood, to take a 
 part in measures tending in their general effect 
 to the same end. Whatever were their suspicion 
 of those motives, they would be reminded of an 
 example, not altogether foreign to the nature of 
 their business, and quite in point to their duty, — 
 that of the magnanimous principle through which 
 the great Apostle disappointed his adversaries, 
 by placing his own triumph in that of his 
 cause, while he saw that cause availing itself of 
 these foes after the manner of some consummate 
 general, who has had the art to make those, 
 who have come into the field as but treacherous 
 auxiliaries, co-operate effectually in the battle 
 which they never intended he should gain. 
 Some preached Christ of envy, and strife, and 
 contention, supposing to add affliction to his 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 93 
 
 bonds ; but, says he. What then ? notwithstand- 
 ing every way, whether in pretence or truth, 
 Christ is preached — the thing itself is done — and I 
 therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. When ani- 
 mated by this high principle, this ambition abso- 
 lutely for the cause itself, its servant is a gainer, 
 because it is a gainer, by all things convertible 
 into tribute, whatever may be the temper or 
 intention of the offerers, either as towards the 
 cause or towards himself. He may say to them, 
 I am more pleased by what you are actually 
 doing, be the motive what it will, in advance- 
 ment of the object to which I am devoted, than 
 it is possible for you to aggrieve me by letting 
 me see that you would not be sorry for the frus- 
 tration of my schemes and exertions for its ser- 
 vice; or even by betraying, though I should 
 lament such a state of your minds, that you 
 would be content to sacrifice it if that might be 
 the way to defeat me. 
 
 We revert but for a moment to the review 
 
 of past times. We said that long after the 
 
 brilliant show of talent, and the creation of 
 literary supplies for the national use, in the 
 early part of the last century, the deplorable 
 mental condition of the people remained in 
 no very great degree altered. To pass from 
 beholding that bright and sumptuous display, 
 in order to see what there was corresponding 
 to it in the subsequent state of the popular 
 
94 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 cultivation, is like going out from some magni- 
 ficent apartment, with its lustres, music, refec- 
 tions, and assemblage of elegant personages, to 
 be beset by beggars in the gloom and cold of 
 a winter night. 
 
 Take a few hours' indulgence in the literary 
 luxuries of Addison and Pope, and then turn 
 to some authentic plain representation of the 
 attainments and habits of the mass of the peo- 
 ple, at the time when Whitefield and Wesley 
 commenced their invasion of the barbarous com- 
 munity. But the benevolent reader, (or let him 
 be a patriotically proud one,) is quite reluctant 
 to recognise his country, his celebrated christian 
 nation, ''the most enlightened in the world," 
 (as song and oratory have it,) in a populace for 
 the far greater part as perfectly estranged from 
 the page of knowledge as if printing, or even 
 letters, had never been invented; the younger 
 part finding their supreme delight in rough 
 frolic and savage sports, the old sinking down 
 into impenetrable stupefaction with the decline 
 of the vital principle. 
 
 If he would eagerly seek to fix on something 
 as a counterbalance to this, and endeavour to 
 modify the estimate and reheve the feeling, by 
 citing perhaps the courage, and a certain rudi- 
 mental capacity of good sense, in which the 
 people are acknowledged to have surpassed the 
 neighbouring nations, he will be compelled to 
 see how these native endowments were overrun 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 95 
 
 and befooled by a farrago of contemptible super- 
 stitions ; — contemptible not only for their stupid 
 absurdity, but also as having in general nothing 
 of that pensive, solemn, and poetical character 
 v^hich superstition is capable of assuming. — It 
 is an exception to be made with respect to the 
 northernmost part of the island, that superstition 
 did there partale of this higher character. It 
 seems to have had much of the tone imitated in 
 the poetry attributed to Ossian. 
 
 As to religion, there is no hazard in saying, 
 that several milhons had little further notion of 
 it than that it was an occasional, or, in the 
 opinion of perhaps one in twenty, a regular 
 attendance at church, hardly taking into the 
 account that they were to be taught any thing 
 there. And what were they taught — those who 
 gave their attendance and attention ? What 
 kind of notions it was that had settled in their 
 minds under such ministration, would be, so to 
 speak, brought out, it would be made apparent 
 what they were or were not taught, when so 
 strong and general a sensation was produced by 
 the irruption among them of the two reformers 
 just named, proclaiming, as they both did, (not- 
 withstanding very considerable differences of 
 secondary order,) the principles which had been 
 authoritatively declared to be of the essence of 
 Christianity in that model of doctrine which 
 had been appointed to prescribe and conserve 
 the national faith. If such doctrine had been 
 
96 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 imparted to a portion of the popular mind, even 
 though with somewhat less positive statement, 
 less copiousness of illustration, and less cogency 
 of enforcement, than it ought ; if it had been 
 but in crude substance fixed in the people's un- 
 derstanding, by the ministry of the many thou- 
 sand authorized instructors, who were by their 
 institute solemnly enjoined and pledged not to 
 teach a different sort of doctrine, and not to fail 
 of teaching this ; — if, we repeat, this faith, so 
 conspicuously declared in the articles, liturgy, 
 and homilies, had been in any degree in posses- 
 sion of the people, they would have recognised 
 its main principles, or at least a similarity of 
 principles, in the addresses of these two new 
 preachers. They would have done so, not- 
 withstanding a peculiarity of phraseology which 
 Whitefield and Wesley carried to excess ; and 
 notwithstanding certain speciahties which the 
 latter did not, even supposing them to be truths, 
 keep sufficiently down in exhibiting the promi- 
 nent essentials of Christianity, in the earlier 
 stages of his public labours. The preaching, 
 therefore, of these men was a test of what the 
 people had been previously taught or allowed to 
 repose in as christian truth, under the tuition 
 of their great religious guardian, the national 
 church. What it was or was not would be 
 found, in their having a sense of something like 
 what they had been taught before, or something 
 opposite to it, or something altogether foreign 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 97 
 
 and unknown, when they were hearing these 
 loud proclaimers of the old doctrines of the 
 Reformation. Now then, as carrying with them 
 this quahty of a test, how were those men 
 received in the community ? Why, they were 
 generally received, on account of the import of 
 what they said, still more than from their zealous 
 manner of saying it, with as strong an impres- 
 sion of novelty, strangeness, and contrariety to 
 every thing hitherto heard of, as any of our 
 voyagers and travellers of discovery have been 
 by the barbarous tribes who had never before 
 seen civilized man, or as the Spaniards on their 
 arrival in Mexico or Peru. They might, as the 
 voyagers have done, experience every local dif- 
 ference of moral temperament, from that which 
 hailed them with acclamations, to that which 
 often exploded in a volley of mud and stones ; 
 but through all these varieties of greetings, there 
 was a strong sense of something then brought 
 before them for the first time. " Thou bringest 
 certain strange things to our ears," was an 
 expression not more unaffectedly uttered by any 
 hearer of an apostle, preaching in a heathen 
 city. And to many of the auditors, it was a 
 matter of nearly as much difficulty as it would 
 to an inquisitive heathen, and required as new a 
 posture of the mind, to obtain a clear view of 
 the evangelical doctrines, though they were the 
 very same which had been held forth by the 
 fathers and martyrs of the Enghsh Church. 
 
9® ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 We have alluded to the violence, which 
 sometimes encountered the endeavour to re- 
 store these doctrines to the knowledge and faith 
 of the people. And if any one should have 
 thought that, in the descriptions we have been 
 giving, too frequent and wilHng use has been 
 made of the epithet " barbarous," or similar 
 words, as if we could have a perverse pleasure 
 in degrading our nation, we would request him 
 to select for himself the appropriate terms for 
 characterising that state of the people, in point 
 of sense and civilization, to say nothing of reli- 
 gion, which could admit such a fact as this to 
 stand in their history — namely, that, in a vast 
 number of instances and places, where some 
 person unexceptionable in character as far as 
 known, and sometimes w^ell known as a worthy 
 man, has attempted to address a number of the 
 inhabitants, under a roof or under the sky, on 
 what it imported them beyond all things in the 
 world to know and consider, a multitude have 
 rushed together shouting and howling, raving 
 and cursing, and accompanying, in many of the 
 instances, their furious cries and yells with loath- 
 some or dangerous missiles ; dragging or driving 
 the preacher from his humble stand, forcing 
 him, and the few^ that wished to encourage and 
 hear him, to flee for their hves, sometimes not 
 without serious injury before they could escape. 
 And that such a history of the people may show 
 how deservedly their superiors were denominated 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 99 
 
 their " betters," it has to add, that these savage 
 tumults were generally instigated or abetted, 
 sometimes under a little concealment, but often 
 avowedly, by persons of higher condition, and 
 even by those consecrated to the office of reli- 
 gious instruction ; and this advantage of their 
 station was lent to defend the perpetrators 
 against shame, or remorse, or just punishment, 
 for the outrage. 
 
 There would be no hazard in affirming, that 
 since Wesley and Whitefield began the conflict 
 with the heathenism of the country, there have 
 been in it hundreds of occurrences answering in 
 substance to this description. From any one, 
 therefore, who should be inclined to accuse us 
 of harsh language, we may well repeat the de- 
 mand in what terms he would think he gave the 
 true character of a mental and moral condition, 
 manifested in such uproars of savage violence as 
 the christian missionaries among eastern idola- 
 ters never have the slightest cause to apprehend. 
 These outrages were so far from uncommon, or 
 confined to any one part of the country, a little 
 before and for a very long while after the middle 
 of the last century, that they might be fairly 
 taken as indicating the depth at which the 
 greatest part of the nation lay sunk in ignorance 
 and barbarism. Yet the good and zealous men 
 whose lot it was to be thus set upon by a de- 
 praved infuriate rabble, the foremost of them 
 active in direct assault, and the rest venting 
 
 h2 
 
MO ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 their ferocious delight in a hideous blending of 
 ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, 
 were taxed with a canting hypocrisy, or a fana- 
 tical madness, for speaking of the prevailing 
 ignorance and barbarism in terms equivalent to 
 our sentence from the Prophet, " The people 
 are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and for 
 deploring the hopelessness of any revolution in 
 this empire of darkness by means of the existing 
 institutions, which seemed indeed to have be- 
 come themselves its strong holds. 
 
 But they whom serious danger could not 
 deter from renewing and indefinitely repeating 
 such attempts at all hazards, were little likely 
 to be appalled by these contumelies of speech. 
 To the persons so abusing them they might 
 cooly reply, " Now really you are inconsiderately 
 wasting your labour. Don't you know, that on 
 the account of this same business we have sus- 
 tained the battery of stones, brickbats, and the 
 contents of the ditch ? And can you believe we 
 can much care for mere words of insult, after 
 that ? Albeit the opprobrious phrases have the 
 fetid coarseness befitting the bluster of property 
 without education, or the more highly inspirited 
 tone of railing learnt in a college, they are quite 
 another kind of thing to be the mark for, than 
 such assailments as have come from the brawny 
 arms of some of your peasants, set on probably 
 by broad hints or plain expressions how much 
 you would be pleased with such exploits." 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 101 
 
 It is gratifying to see thus exemplified, ifi the 
 endurance of evil for a good cause, that provi- 
 sion in our nature for economizing the expense 
 of feeling, through which the encountering of 
 the greater creates a hardihood which can despise 
 the less. 
 
 That our descriptive observations do not ex- 
 aggerate the popular ignorance, with its natural 
 concomitants, as prevailing at the middle of the 
 last century and far downward, many of the 
 elderly persons among us can readily confirm, 
 from what they remember of the testimony of 
 their immediate ancestors, some of them perhaps 
 not very long removed from the world. It will 
 easily be recollected what pictures they gave of 
 the moral scene spread over the country when 
 they were young. They could convey lively 
 images of the situations in which the vulgar 
 notions and manners had their free display, by 
 representing the assemblages, and the fashion of 
 discourse and manners, at fairs, revels, and other 
 rendezvous of amusement; or in the field of 
 rural employment, or on the village green, or in 
 front of the mechanic's workshop. They could 
 recount various anecdotes characteristic of the 
 times ; and repeat short dialogues, or single 
 sayings, which expressed the very essence of 
 what was to the population of the township or 
 province instead of law and prophets, or sages 
 or apostles. They could describe how free from 
 
102 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 all sense of shame whole families would seem to 
 be, from grandsires down to the third rude reck- 
 less generation, for not being able to read ; and 
 how well content, when there was some one 
 individual in the neighbourhood who could read 
 an advertisement, or ballad, or last dying speech 
 of a malefactor, for the benefit of the rest. 
 They could describe the desolation of the land, 
 with respect to any enlightening and impressive 
 religious instruction in the places of worship ; 
 in the generality of which, indeed, the whole 
 spirit and manner of the service tended to what 
 we just now described as the fact — that religion, 
 in its proper sense, was absolutely a thing not 
 recognised at all. To most of the persons there 
 the forms attended to were representative of 
 literally nothing — they were themselves the all.* 
 
 * None of the anecdotes, that have come down in traditions 
 now fading away, are more illustrative of those times, than 
 those which show both people and priest satisfied with the 
 observances at church as constituting religion, never thinking 
 of them as but the means to teach and inspire it. Such anec- 
 dotes must have been heard by every one who has conversed 
 much with such aged persons as remember the most of former 
 times. Some traditions of this kind may be recalled to mind, 
 through similarity of character, by hearing such an instance as 
 the following. A friend of the writer mentions, that he heard 
 his father, whose veracity was above all question, relate as 
 one of the recollections of the time when he was a young man, 
 that in the parish church where he attended, the service was one 
 Sunday morning performed with a somewhat unusual despatch, 
 and every abbreviation that depended on the discretion of the 
 minister ; who at the conclusion explained the circumstance 
 publicly by saying, that as neighbour such-a-one (mentioning 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 103 
 
 And as to those who really did in the course of 
 their attendance acquire something assignable as 
 their creed, our supposed reporters could tell 
 what wretched and delusive notions of religion, 
 or rather instead of religion, they w^ere per^ 
 mitted and authorized, by their appointed 
 spiritual guides, to carry with them to their last 
 hour. At which hour, some ceremonial form 
 was to be a passport to heaven : a little bread 
 and wine, converted into a mysterious object of 
 superstition, by receiving an ecclesiastical name 
 of unknown import, accompanied with some 
 sentences regarded much in the nature of an 
 incantation, — and all was safe! The sinner 
 expiring believed so, and the sinners surviving 
 were allowed to form their plan of life on a caU 
 culation of the same final resource. i 
 
 -moD t onl 
 
 Thus the past age has left an image of its 
 character in the minds of the generation now 
 themselves growing old, received by immediate 
 tradition from persons who lived in it. Here 
 and there, indeed, there still lingers, so long 
 after the departure of the great company to 
 
 the name) was going to bait his bull in the afternoon, he had 
 been as short as possible that the congiTgation might have 
 good time for the sport. — The relater of this to the writer 
 thinks it may, indeed, have been as long since as seventy, or 
 perhaps eighty years. — It is on the same principle that the 
 catholics on the Continent, having attended itiass in the morn- 
 ing, never think of doubting their license for every frivolity 
 the rest of the day. 
 
104 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 which he belonged, an ancient who retains a 
 trace of this image immediately from the reality, 
 as having become of an age to look at the 
 world, and take a share in its activities, about 
 the middle of the last century.* And it might 
 be an employment of considerable though rather 
 melancholy interest, for a person visiting many 
 parts of the land, to put in requisition, in each 
 place, for a day or two, the most faithful of the 
 memories of the most narrative of the oldest 
 people, for materials toward forming an estimate 
 of the mental and moral- state of the main body 
 of the inhabitants, of town or country, in the 
 period of which they themselves saw the latter 
 part, and remember it in combination with what 
 their progenitors related of the former. After 
 these few retainers of the original picture from 
 the life shall have left the world, it will be com- 
 paratively a faint conception that can be formed 
 of that age from written memorials, which exist 
 but in a very imperfect and scattered state. 
 
 But supposing the scene could be brought 
 back to the mental eye, in full verity and dis- 
 tinctness, as in a vision supernaturally imparted, 
 are we sure we should not have the mortifica- 
 tion of perceiving that the change, from the 
 condition of the people then to their condition 
 now, has been in but poor proportion to the 
 amount of the advantages, which we are apt to 
 
 * They are here supposed to be looking back firom about 
 the year 1820. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 105 
 
 be elated in recounting as the boast and happi- 
 ness of later times ? To assume that we should 
 not, is to impute to that former age still more 
 ignorance and debasement than appear in the 
 above description. For what could, what must 
 that condition have been, if it was worse than 
 the present by any thing near the difference of a 
 tolerably fair improvement of the additional 
 means latterly afforded? An estimate being 
 made of the measure of intelligence and worth 
 found among the descendants, let so much be 
 taken out as we are willing to attribute to the 
 effect of these additional means, and what will 
 that remainder be which is to represent the 
 state of the ancestors, formed under a system 
 of means wanting all those which we are allow- 
 ing ourselves to think important enough to war- 
 rant the frequent expression, " This new era ?" 
 
 The means wanting to the former generation, 
 and that have sprung into existence for the 
 latter, may be briefly noted ; and those of a 
 religious nature may be named first. It is the 
 most obvious of pubhc expedients, that good 
 men who wish to make others so, should 'preach 
 to them. And there has been a wonderful 
 extension of this practice since the zealous 
 exertions of Whitefield, Wesley, and their co- 
 operators awakened other good men to a sense 
 of their capacity and duty^ <, The spirit actuating 
 the associated followers of the latter of those 
 
106 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 two great agitators, has impelled forth their 
 whole disposable force (to use a mihtary phrase) 
 to this service; and they have sent preachers 
 into many parts of the land where preaching 
 itself, in any fair sense of the term, was wholly a 
 novelty ; and where there was roused as earnest 
 a zeal to crush this alarming innovation, as the 
 people of Iceland are described to feel on the 
 occasion of the approach of a white bear to in- 
 vade their folds or poorly stocked pastures. To 
 a confederacy of christians so well aware of their 
 own strength and progress, it may seem a super- 
 fluous testimony that they are doing incalculable 
 good among our population, more good proba- 
 bly than any other religious sect. This tribute 
 is paid not the less freely for a material differ- 
 ence in theological opinion ; nor for our thinking, 
 that they may have displayed some certain 
 modicum too much of ambition in capacity of a 
 religious body, combined with a good deal too 
 much tendency to servility to power in capacity 
 of citizens ; as also a small portion more than is 
 defensively necessary of the Ishmaelitish quahty 
 as toward other sects of dissenters ; and some 
 exemplification of the difficulty of combining 
 sound judgment with ardent feelings. 
 
 An immense augmentation has been brought 
 to the sum of public instruction, by the con- 
 tinually enlarging numbers of dissenters of other 
 denominations. Whatever may be thought of 
 some of the consequences of the great extension 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 10? 
 
 of dissent, it will hardly be considered as a cir- 
 cumstance tending to prolong the reign of 
 ignorance that thus, within the last fifty years, 
 there have been put in activity to impart reli- 
 gious ideas to the people not fewer (exclusively 
 of the Wesleyans) than several thousand minds 
 that would, under a continuance of the former 
 state of the nation, have been doing no such 
 service ; that is to say, the service would not 
 have been done at all. Let it be considered, 
 too, that the doctrines inculcated as of the first 
 importance, in the preaching of far the greatest 
 number of them, were exactly those which the 
 Established Church avowed in its formularies 
 and disowned in its ministry, — one of the cir- 
 cumstances which contributed the most to make 
 dissenters of the more seriously disposed among 
 the people. — It is to be added, that so much 
 public activity in religious instruction could not 
 be unaccompanied by an increase of exertion in 
 the more private methods of imparting it. 
 ; It is another important accession to the en- 
 larged system of operations against religious 
 ignorance, that a proportion of the Established 
 Church itself has been recovered to the spirit 
 of its venerable founders, by the progressive 
 formation in it of a zealous evangelical ministry ; 
 dissenters within their own community, if we 
 may believe the constant loud declarations 
 of the bulk of that community, and espe- 
 cially of the most dignified, learned, and 
 
108 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 powerful classes in it. But in spite of whatever 
 discredit they may suffer from being thus dis- 
 owned, these worthy and useful men, being 
 clergymen nevertheless, have a material advan- 
 tage above other worthy teachers, for influence 
 on many of the people, in being invested with 
 the credentials of the ancient institution, from 
 which the popular mind has been slow and 
 reluctant in withdrawing its veneration ; and 
 for which that sentiment, if not quite extinct, 
 is ready to revive at any appearance in it of a 
 worthier spirit arising. We say, if the senti- 
 ment be not quite extinct ; for we are aware 
 what a very large proportion of the people are 
 gone beyond the possibility of feeling it any 
 more. But still the number is great of those 
 who experience, at this new appearance, a 
 reanimation of their affection for the church ; 
 and so fondly identify the partial change with 
 the whole institution, that they feel as if a 
 parent, who had for a long while neglected or 
 deserted them, but for whom they could never 
 cease to cherish a filial regard, were beginning to 
 be restored to them, with a renewal of the benig- 
 nant qualities and cares of the parental character. 
 
 Thus far the account of the means which 
 England was not to furnish for its people till 
 the latter part of the eighteenth century, relates 
 to their better instruction in religion. It will 
 not be objected that this is beside the purpose 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 109 
 
 of an enumeration of expedients for lessening 
 their ignorance, by any one who can allow that 
 religion, regarded as a subject of the understand- 
 ing, is the most important part of knowledge, 
 and who has observed the fact that religion, 
 when it begins to interest uncultivated minds, 
 works surprisingly in favour of the intellectual 
 faculties ; an effect exactly the reverse of that 
 of superstition, and produced by the contrary 
 operation ; for while superstition represses and 
 even curses any free action of the intellect, true 
 religion both requires and excites it. Though 
 the great christian truths, when embraced with 
 conviction and seriousness by a very uneducated 
 man, must greatly share with him, it is too true, 
 the ill-fortune which has confined his mental 
 growth, they will often do more than any other 
 thing within the same space of time to avenge 
 him of it. 
 
 In addition to the great extension of instruc- 
 tion in a form specifically rehgious, there have 
 been various causes and means contributing 
 to the increase of knowledge among the people. 
 After it had been seen for centuries in what 
 manner the children of the poor were suffered 
 to spend the Sunday, it struck one observer at 
 last, that they might on that day be taught 
 to read! — a possibility which had never been 
 suspected ; a disclosure as of some hitherto 
 hidden power of nature. And then the schools 
 which taught the children to read made some 
 
110 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of the parents so much better pleased with their 
 children for their first steps in so new an attain- 
 ment, that they could not be indifferent to the 
 opening of other schools of a humble order to 
 continue that instruction through the week. It 
 was within the same period that there was a 
 large circulation of tracts, by some of which 
 many who might be little desirous of instruction, 
 were beguiled into it by the amusing vehicle 
 ingeniously contrived to convey it ; and the best 
 of which will remain a monument of the talent, 
 knowledge, and benevolence, of that distinguished 
 benefactor of her country and age, Mrs. H. More, 
 perhaps even pre-eminent above her many ex- 
 cellent works in a higher strain. Later and con- 
 tinual issues of this class of papers, of every 
 diversity of composition, and diffused by the acti- 
 vity of numberless hands, have solicited perhaps 
 a fourth part of the thoughtless beings in the 
 nation to make at least one short effort to think. 
 The enormous flight of periodical miscella- 
 nies, and of newspapers, must be taken as 
 both the indication and the cause that hun- 
 dreds of thousands of persons were giving some 
 attention to the matters of general information, 
 where their grandfathers had been, during the 
 intervals of time allowed by their employments, 
 prating, brawling, sleeping, or drinking their 
 hours away.* 
 
 * Since this was written there has been a prodigious aug- 
 mentation of all these means of general excitement ; and 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. Ill 
 
 It is perhaps an item of some small value 
 in the account, that a new class of ideas was 
 furnished by the many wonderful effects of 
 science, in the application of the elements and 
 mechanical powers. The people saw human 
 intelligence so effectually inspiriting inanimate 
 matter, as to create a new and mighty order of 
 agency, appearing in a certain degree indepen- 
 dent of man himself, and in its power immensely 
 surpassing any simple immediate exertion of 
 his power. They saw wood and iron, fire, water, 
 and air, actuated to the production of effects 
 which might vie with what their rude ancestors 
 had been accustomed to believe, (those of them 
 who had heard of such beings,) of giants, magi- 
 cians, alchymists, and monsters ; effects which 
 the few more intelligent of the former race, 
 excepting here and there a mind of the very 
 highest reach, would have scorned any dream 
 that should have presumed to predict. 
 
 It is true, that very ignorant persons can 
 wonder at such things without deriving much 
 instruction from them; and that much sooner 
 than the more cultivated ones they become so 
 familiarized with them as not to think of them. 
 
 happily a diversified and ample one of a class of them cal- 
 culated to benefit the inferior people, at once by giving them 
 a new and enlarged range of ideas, and by bringing them on 
 some tracts of common ground W\i\\ the liberally educated ; 
 thus abating the former almost total incapacity, on the part of 
 those inferiors, for intelligent intercommunication. 
 
112 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 All effects, however astonishing, are apt, if they 
 be but regular in their recurrence, to become 
 very soon insignificant to those who have never 
 learnt to think of causes. But still, it would 
 be some little advantage to the people's under- 
 standing to see what prodigious effects could be 
 produced without any preternatural interference. 
 Though not comprehending the science em- 
 ployed, they could comprehend that what they 
 saw was purely a matter of science, and that the 
 cause and the effect were natural and definite ; 
 unlike the present race of Egyptians, who regard 
 the very mechanics of an European as an opera- 
 tion of magic ; and are capable of expecting 
 that a machine constructed by a man from 
 England, for raising water from the Nile, 
 should inundate the country in an hour. 
 These wonders of science and art must there- 
 fore have contributed somewhat to rid our 
 people of the impressions of being at every 
 turn beset by witchcraft, and to expel the 
 notions of a vague and capricious agency inter- 
 fering and sporting with events throughout the 
 system around them. Their rationality thus 
 obtained an improvement which may be set 
 against the injury undoubtedly done them 
 through thatv diminished exercise of the un- 
 derstanding which accompanied the progres- 
 sive division of labour ; an alteration rendered 
 inevitable, and in other respects so advan- 
 tageous. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 113 
 
 When we come down to a comparatively 
 recent time, we see the Bible "going up on 
 the breadth of the land." In passing by any 
 given number of houses of the inferior class, 
 we may presume there are in them thrice as 
 many copies of that sacred book as there 
 were in the same number but twenty years 
 since. And when we consider how many 
 more persons in those houses can read, and 
 that in some of them the book may be more 
 read for having come there as a novelty, than 
 it is in many others where it has been an old 
 article of the furniture, we may fairly presume 
 that the increased reading is in a greater pro- 
 portion than the increased number of Bibles. — 
 This very late period has also brought into 
 action, a new expedient, worthy to stand, in 
 the province of education, parallel and rival 
 to the finest modern inventions in the mecha- 
 nical departments, an organization for schools, 
 by which, instead of one or two overlaboured 
 agents upon a mass of reluctant subjects, that 
 whole mass itself shall be animated into a 
 system of reciprocal agency. Its adoption, we 
 trust, will be as extensive as is deserved by a 
 contrivance which associates with mental labour 
 a pleasure never known to young learners 
 before. 
 
 One more distinction of our times has been, 
 that effect which missionary and other philan- 
 thropic societies have had, to render familiar 
 
 I 
 
114 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 to common knowledge, by means of their 
 meetings and publications, a great number of 
 such interesting and important facts, in the 
 state of other countries and our own, as would 
 formerly have been far beyond the sphere of 
 ordinary information. 
 
 In aid of all these means at work in the 
 trial to raise the people from the condition 
 in which they had been so many ages sunk 
 and immovable, there has been of late years 
 the unpretending but important ministration 
 of an incessant multifarious inventiveness in 
 making almost every sort of information offer 
 itself in brief, familiar, and attractive forms, 
 adapted to youth or to adult ignorance ; so 
 that knowledge, which was formerly a thing to be 
 searched and dug for " as for hid treasures," has 
 seemed at last beginning to effloresce through the 
 surface of the ground on all sides of us. 
 
 The statement of what recent times have 
 produced for effecting an alteration among 
 the people, must include the prodigious com- 
 motion in the pohtical world. It were absurd, 
 it is true, to name this in the simple character 
 of a cause, when we speak of the rousing of 
 the popular mind from a long stagnation, it 
 being itself a proof and result of some pre- 
 ceding cause beginning to pervade and disturb 
 that stagnation. But whatever may be as- 
 signed as the true and sufficient explanation of 
 its origin, we have to look on the mighty 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 115 
 
 operation of its progress, forcing an alteration 
 into almost every part of the social economy. 
 In the whole compass of time there has been 
 no train of events, that has within so short a 
 period stirred to the very bottom the mind of 
 so vast a portion of the race. And the power 
 of this great commotion has less consisted in 
 what may be termed its physical energy, 
 evinced in grand exploits and catastrophes, 
 than in its being an intense activity of prin- 
 ciples. It was as different from other con- 
 vulsions in the moral world, as a tempest 
 which should be attributed to the direct inter- 
 vention of a mighty spirit, whether believed 
 celestial or infernal, would be from one raised 
 in the elements by mere natural causes. The 
 people were not, as in other instances of battles, 
 revolutions, and striking alternations of fortune, 
 gazing at a mere show of wonderful events, 
 but regarded these events as the course of a 
 great practical debate of questions affecting 
 their own interests. 
 
 And now, when we have put all these 
 things together, we may well pause to indulge 
 again our wonder what could have been the 
 mental situation of a majority of the inha- 
 bitants of this country, antecedently to this 
 creation and conjunction of so many means 
 and influences for awaking them to something 
 of an intelligent existence. 
 
 i2 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the 
 popular character. — Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general 
 and comprehensive purpose to be pursued. — Gratification of the senses 
 the chief good. — Cruelty a subsidiary resource. — Disposition to cruelty 
 displayed and confirmed by common practices. — Confirmed especially 
 by the manner of slaughtering animals destined for food. — Displayed 
 in the abuse of the labouring animals.— General characteristic of the 
 people an indistinct and faint sense of right and wrong. — Various 
 exemplifications. — Dishonour to our country that the people should 
 have remained in such a condition. — Effects of their ignorance as 
 appearing in several parts of the economy of life ; in their ordinary 
 occupations ; in their manner of spending their leisure time, including 
 the Sunday ; in the state of domestic society ; consequences of this last 
 as seen in the old age of parents. — The lower classes placed by their 
 want of education out of amicable communication with the higher. — 
 Unhappy and dangerous consequences of this. — Great decline of the 
 respect which in former times the people felt toward the higher classes 
 and the existing order of the community. — Progress of a contrary 
 spirit 
 
 The review of the past may here be terminated. 
 And how welcome a change it would be if w^e 
 might here completely emerge from the gloom 
 which has overspread it. How happy were it if, 
 in proceeding to an estimate of the people of 
 the present times, we found so rich a practical 
 result of the means for forming a more enhght- 
 ened race, that we should have no further recol- 
 lection of that sentence from the Prophet, which 
 has hitherto suggested itself again at every 
 step in prosecution of the survey. But we are 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 117 
 
 compelled to see how slow is the progress of 
 mankind toward thus rendering obsolete or but 
 purely historical any of the darker lines of the 
 sacred book. So completely, so desperately, 
 had the whole popular body and being been 
 pervaded by the stupifying power of the long 
 reign of ignorance, — with such heavy reluctance, 
 at the best, does the human mind open its eyes 
 to admit light,— and so incommensurate as yet, 
 even on the supposition of its having much less 
 of this reluctance, has been in quantity the 
 whole new supply of means for a happy change, 
 — that we have still before us a melancholy 
 spectacle. 
 
 Even that portion of beneficial effect which 
 actually has resulted from this co-operation of 
 new forces, has served to make a more obvious 
 exposure of the unhappiness and ofFensiveness of 
 what is still the condition of the far greater part 
 of our population ; as a dreary waste is made to 
 give a more sensible impression how dreary it is, 
 by the little inroads of cultivation and beauty in 
 its hollows, and the faint advances of an un- 
 wonted green upon its borders. The degradation 
 of the lower class is the most forcibly illustrated, 
 as seen in contrast with something better within 
 that class itself. It is not with the philosophers, 
 literati, and most accomphshed classes in higher 
 life, that men would ever think of comparing 
 the untutored rustics and the workmen in stones 
 and timber. These orders would seem less 
 
118 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 related in virtue of their common nature, than 
 separated by the wide disparity of its cultivation. 
 They would appear so immeasurably asunder, 
 such antipodes in the sphere of human existence, 
 that the state of the one could afford no standard 
 for judging of the defects or wants of the other. 
 Nothing would seem more idle than to speculate 
 seriously on possibilities of approximation be- 
 tween them. The richer were the one class in 
 what was deemed to verify the nobleness of the 
 rational nature, the less would any question be 
 suggested whether some slight humble partici- 
 pation might not be afforded to relieve the 
 poverty of the other. It was in a speculation 
 which abstained from measuring the distance 
 between extremes, and amusing itself, as with 
 a curious fact, in seeing that the same mate- 
 rial can be made into kings and heroes and 
 into helots ; it was in a speculation which, in- 
 stead of dwelling on the view of what was 
 impossible to the common people in a compa- 
 rative reference to the highest classes of their 
 fellow men, considered what was left practicable 
 to them within their own narrow allotment, that 
 the schemes originated which have actually given 
 to a proportion of them that humble participa- 
 tion. There has thus been formed a small 
 improved order of people amidst the multitude ; 
 and it is between these and the general state of 
 that multitude that the grievous contrast arises. 
 It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 119 
 
 a labouring man and his family, and affect to 
 deplore that he is doomed not to behold the 
 depths and heights of science, not to expatiate 
 over the wide field of history, not to luxuriate 
 among the delights, refinements, and infinite 
 diversities of literature ; and that his family are 
 not growing up in a training to every high ac- 
 comphshment, after the pattern of some family 
 in the neighbourhood, favoured by fortune, and 
 high ability and cultivation in those at their 
 head. But it is a quite different thing to take 
 this man and his family, unable perhaps, both 
 himself and they, even to read, and therefore 
 sunk in all the debasement of ignorance, — and 
 compare them with another man and family in 
 the same sphere of life, but who have received 
 the utmost improvement within the reach of 
 that situation, and are sensible of its value ; who 
 often employ the leisure hour in reading, (some- 
 times socially and with intermingled converse,) 
 some easy work of instruction or innocent en- 
 tertainment ; are detached, in the greatest degree 
 that depends on their choice, from society with 
 the absolute vulgar ; have learnt much decorum 
 of manners ; can take an intelligent interest in 
 the great events of the world ; and are prevented, 
 by what they read and hear, from forgetting that 
 there is another world. It is, we repeat, after 
 thus seeing what may, and in particular in- 
 stances does exist, in a humble condition, that 
 we are compelled to regard as really a dreadful 
 
120 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 spectacle the still prevailing state of our na- 
 tional population. 
 
 We shall endeavour to exhibit, though on a 
 small scale, and perhaps not with a very strict 
 regularity of proportion and arrangement, a 
 faithful representation of the most serious of 
 the evils conspicuous in an uneducated state of 
 the people. Much of the description and re- 
 flections must be equally applicable to other 
 countries ; for there is nothing which they pos- 
 sess so much in common, except the mere 
 general properties of man and nature, as a 
 neglected degraded condition of their people. 
 But it is here at home that we feel this condi- 
 tion the most painfully forced on our attention ; 
 and here also of all the world it is, that such a 
 wretched exhibition is the severest reproach to 
 the nation for having suffered its existence. 
 
 The subject is to the last degree unattractive, 
 except to a misanthropic disposition ; or to that, 
 perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when 
 tempted to be pleased with the very superfluity of 
 the means for overwhelming the opposers of the 
 doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of 
 our nature. As spread over a coarse and repul- 
 sive moral and physical scenery, it is a subject 
 in the extreme of contrast to all susceptibility of 
 that magnificence of display, on account of which 
 some of the most cruel evils that have preyed on 
 mankind have ever been favourite themes with 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 121 
 
 writers ambitious to shine in description. Nor 
 does it present a wild and varying spectacle, 
 where a crowd of fantastic shapes, (as in a view 
 of the pagan superstitions,) may stimulate and 
 beguile the imagination though we know we are 
 looking on a great evil. It is a gloomy mono- 
 tony ; Death without his dance. The represen- 
 tation, moreover, while it shews one large class 
 degraded and unhappy, reflects ungraciously, by 
 an imputation of neglect of duty, on other 
 classes who may be supposed to be called upon 
 to look at the spectacle. There is, besides, but 
 little power of arresting the attention in a de- 
 scription of familiar matter of fact, plain to every 
 one's observation. Yet ought it not to be so 
 much the better, when we are pleading for a 
 certain mode of benevolent exertion, that every 
 one can see, and that no one can deny, the sad 
 reality of all that forms the object, and imposes 
 the duty, of that exertion ? 
 
 Look, then, at the neglected ignorant class 
 in their childhood and youth. One of the 
 most obvious circumstances is the perfect non- 
 existence in their mhuh of any notion or ques- 
 tion what their life is for, take7i as a whole. 
 Among a crowd of trifling and corrupting 
 ideas that soon find a place in them, there is 
 never the reflective thought, — For what pur- 
 pose am I alive ? What is it that I should 
 be, more than the animal that I am ? Does 
 
122 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 it signify what I may be ? — But surely, it is 
 with ill omen that the human creature advances 
 into life without such a thought. He should 
 in the opening of his faculties receive intima- 
 tions, that something more belongs to his ex- 
 istence than what he is about to - day, and 
 what he may be about to-morrow. He should 
 be made aware that the course of activity he 
 is beginning ought to have a leading prin- 
 ciple of direction, some predominant aim, a 
 general and comprehensive purpose, paramount 
 to the divers particular objects he may pursue. 
 It is not more necessary for him to understand 
 that he must in some way be employed in 
 order to live, than to be apprised that life 
 itself, that existence itself, is of no value but 
 as a mere capacity of something which he 
 should realize, and of which he may fail. He 
 should be brought to apprehend that there is 
 a something essential for him to be, which he 
 will not become merely by passing from one 
 day into another, by eating and sleeping, by 
 growing taller and stronger, seizing what share 
 he can of noisy sport, and performing ap- 
 pointed portions of work; and that if he do 
 not become that which he cannot become with- 
 out a general and leading purpose, he will be 
 worthless and unhappy. 
 
 We are not entertaining the extravagant 
 fancy that it is possible, except in some rare 
 instances of premature thoughtfulness, to turn 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 123 
 
 inward into deep habitual reflection, the spirit 
 that naturally goes outward, in these vivacious, 
 active, careless beings, when we assert that 
 it is possible to teach many of them with a 
 degree of success, in very juvenile years, to 
 apprehend and admit somewhat of such a con- 
 sideration. We have many times seen this 
 exemphfied in fact. We have found some of 
 them appearing apprised that life is for some- 
 thing as a whole; and that, to answer that 
 general purpose, a mere succession of interests 
 and activities, each gone into for its own sake, 
 will not suffice. They could comprehend, that 
 the multiphcity of interests and activities in 
 detail, instead of constituting of themselves 
 the purpose of life, were to be regarded as 
 things subordinate and subservient to a general 
 scope, and judged of, selected, and regulated, 
 in reference and amenableness to it. — By the 
 presiding comprehensive purpose, we do not 
 specifically and exclusively mean a direction 
 of the mind to the religious concern, viewed 
 as in contradistinction to other interests ; but 
 a purpose formed upon a collective notion of 
 the person's interests, which shall give one 
 general right bearing to the course of his life ; 
 an aim proceeding in fulfilment of a scheme, 
 that comprehends and combines with the re- 
 ligious concern all the other concerns for the 
 sake of which it is worth while to dispose the 
 activities of life into a j)lan of conduct, instead 
 
124 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of leaving them to custom and casualty. The 
 scheme will look and guide toward ultimate 
 felicity ; but will at the same time take large 
 account of what must be thought of, and what 
 may be hoped for, in relation to the present 
 life. 
 
 Now, we no more expect to find any such 
 idea of a presiding purpose of life, than we 
 do the profoundest philosophical reflection, in 
 the minds of the uneducated children and 
 youth. They think nothing at all about their 
 existence and life in any moral or abstracted 
 or generalizing reference whatever. They 
 know not any good that it is to have been 
 endowed w^ith a rational rather than a brute 
 nature, excepting that thus they have the pri- 
 vilege of tyrannizing over brutes. They think 
 nothing about what they shall become, and 
 very little about what shall become of them. 
 There is nothing that tells them of the rela- 
 tions for good and evil, of present things with 
 future and remote ones. The whole energy 
 of their moral and intellectual nature goes 
 out as in brute instinct on present objects, to 
 make the most they can of them for the mo- 
 ment, taking the chance for whatever may be 
 next. They are left totally devoid even of the 
 thought, that what they are doing is the begin- 
 ning of a life as an important adventure for good 
 or evil ; their whole faculty is engrossed in the 
 doing of it ; and whether it signify any thing 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 125 
 
 to the next ensuing stage of life, or to the last, 
 is as foreign to any calculation of theirs, as 
 the idea of reading their destiny in the stars. 
 Not only, therefore, is there an entire pre- 
 clusion from their minds of the faintest hint 
 of a monition, that they should live for the 
 grand final object pointed to by religion, but 
 also, for the most part, of all consideration of 
 the attainment of a reputable condition and 
 character in life. The creature endowed with 
 faculties for " large discourse, looking before 
 and after," capable of so much design, respect- 
 ability, and happiness, even in its present short 
 stage, and entering on an endless career, is 
 seen in the abasement of snatching, as its utmost 
 reach of purpose, at the low amusements, 
 blended with vices, of each passing day; and 
 cursing its privations and tasks, and often also 
 the sharers of those privations, and the exactors 
 of those tasks. 
 
 When these are grown up into the mass of 
 mature population, what will it be, as far as 
 their quality shall go toward constituting the 
 quality of the whole ? Alas ! it will be, to 
 that extent, just a continuation of the ignorance, 
 debasement, and misery, so conspicuous in the 
 bulk of the people now. And to what extent ? 
 Calculate that from the unquestionable fact, that 
 hundreds of thousands of the human beings in 
 our land, between the ages, say of six and 
 sixteen, are at this hour thus abandoned to go 
 
126 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 forward into life at random, as to the use they 
 shall make of it, — if, indeed, it can be said to 
 be at random, when there is strong tendency 
 and temptation to evil, and no discipline to 
 good. Looking at this proportion, does any 
 one think there will be, on the whole, wis- 
 dom and virtue enough in the community to 
 render this black infusion imperceptible or 
 innoxious ? 
 
 But are we accounting it absolutely inevitable 
 that the sequel must be in full proportion to 
 this present fact, — must be every thing that this 
 fact threatens, and ca7i lead to, — as we should 
 behold persons carried down in a mighty torrent, 
 where all interposition is impossible, or as the 
 Turks look at the progress of a conflagration or 
 an epidemic ? It is in order to '' frustrate the 
 tokens" of such melancholy divination, to arrest 
 something of what a destructive power is in the 
 act of carrying away, to make the evil spirit 
 find, in the next stages of his march, that all 
 his enlisted host have not followed him, and 
 to quell somewhat of the triumph of his boast, 
 '^ My name is Legion, for we are many ;" — it is 
 for this that the friends of improvement, and 
 of mankind, are called upon for efforts greatly 
 beyond those which are requisite for maintaining 
 in its present extent of operation the system of 
 expedients for intercepting, before it be too late, 
 the progress of so large a portion of the youthful 
 tribe toward destruction. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 127 
 
 Another obvious circumstance in the state 
 of the untaught class is^ that they are abandoned, 
 in a direct unqualified manner, to seize recklessly 
 whatever they can of sensual gratification. The 
 very narrow^ scope to vs^hich their condition 
 hmits them in the pursuit of this, will not pre- 
 vent its being to them the most desirable thing 
 in existence, when there are so few other modes 
 of gratification which they either are in a capa- 
 city to enjoy, or have the means to obtain. By 
 the very constitution of the human nature, the 
 mind seems half to belong to the senses, it is so 
 shut within them, affected by them, dependent 
 on them for pleasure, as well as for activity, and 
 impotent but through their medium. And while, 
 by this necessary hold which they have on what 
 would call itself a spiritual being, they abso- 
 lutely will engross to themselves, as of clear 
 right, a large share of its interest and exercise, 
 they will strive to possess themselves of the 
 other half too. And they will have it, if it has 
 not been carefully otherwise claimed and pre- 
 occupied. And when the senses have thus 
 usurped the whole mind for their service, how 
 will you get any of it back ? Try, if you will, 
 whether this be a thing so easy to be done. 
 Present to the minds so engrossed with the 
 desires of the senses, that their main action 
 is but in these desires and the contrivances 
 how to fulfil them, — offer to their view nobler 
 objects, which are appropriate to the spiritual 
 
128 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 being, and observe whether that being promptly 
 shows a sensibihty to the worthier objects, as 
 congenial to its nature, and, obsequious to the 
 new attraction, disengages itself from what has 
 wholly absorbed it. 
 
 Nor would we require that the experiment be 
 made by presenting something of a precisely 
 religious nature, to which there is an innate 
 aversion on account of its divine character, sepa- 
 rately from its being an intellectual thing, — 
 an aversion even though the mental faculties 
 be cultivated. It may be made with something 
 that ought to have power to please the mind as 
 simply a being of intelligence, imagination, and 
 sentiment, — a pleasure which, in some of its 
 modes, the senses themselves may intimately 
 partake; as when, for instance, it is to be im- 
 parted by something beautiful or grand in the 
 natural world, or in the works of art. Let this 
 refined solicitation be addressed to the grossly 
 uncultivated, in competition with some low 
 indulgence — with the means, for example, of 
 gluttony and inebriation. See how the sub- 
 jects of your experiment, (intellectual and moral 
 natures though they are,) answer to these re- 
 spective offered gratifications. Observe how 
 these more dignified attractives encounter and 
 overpower the meaner, and reclaim the usurped, 
 debased spirit. Or rather, observe whether they 
 can avail, for more than an instant, so much as 
 to divide its attention. But indeed you can 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 129 
 
 foresee the result so well, that you may spare the 
 labour. Still less could you deem it to be of 
 the nature of an experiment, (which implies 
 uncertainty,) to make the attempt with ideal 
 forms of nobleness or beauty, with intellectual, 
 poetical, or moral captivations. 
 
 Yet this addiction to sensuality, beyond all 
 competition of worthier modes and means of 
 interest, does not altogether refuse to admit of 
 some division and diversion of the vulgar feel- 
 ings, in favour of some things of a more mental 
 character, provided they be vicious. A man so 
 neglected in his youth that he cannot spell the 
 names of Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon, may 
 feel the strong incitement of ambition. This, 
 instead of raising him, may only propel him for- 
 ward on the level of his debased condition and 
 society ; and it is a favourable supposition that 
 makes him " the best wrestler on the green," or 
 a manful pugilist; for it is probable his grand 
 dehght may be, to indulge himself in an oppres- 
 sive insolent arrogance toward such as are 
 unable to maintain a strife with him on terms of 
 fair rivalry, making his will the law to all whom 
 he can force or frighten into submission. 
 
 The devotement to coarse sensuality admits, 
 again, of occasional competition and suspension 
 in behalf of the pleasures of cruelty ; a flagrant 
 characteristic, generally, of uncultivated degraded 
 human creatures, both where the whole commu- 
 nity consists of such, as in barbarous and savage 
 
 K 
 
130 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 tribes, and where they form a large portion of 
 it, as in this country. It is hardly worth while 
 to put in words the acknowledgment of the 
 obvious and odious fact, that a considerable 
 share of mental attainment is sometimes ineffi- 
 cient to extinguish this infernal principle of 
 human nature, by which it is gratifying to wit- 
 ness and inflict suffering, even separately from 
 any prompting of revenge. All of us have seen 
 examples of this inefficiency. But why do we 
 regard them as peculiarly hateful, and brand 
 them with the most intense reprobation, but 
 because it is judged the fair and natural tendency 
 of mental cultivation to repress that principle, 
 insomuch that a surpassing virulence of depra- 
 vity is evinced by the failure of that discipline 
 to produce this effect ? Every one is ready 
 with the saying of the ancient poet, that liberal 
 acquirements suppress ferocious propensities. 
 But then, think of that discipline being almost 
 wholly withheld, so that the execrable propen- 
 sity may go into action with its malignity 
 unmitigated, unchecked, by any remonstrance 
 of feeling or taste, or reason or conscience. 
 
 And such a consequence of the absence of 
 that discipline, is manifest in the lower ranks of 
 our self-extolled community ; notwithstanding a 
 diminution, which the progress of education and 
 religion has slowly effected, in certain of the 
 once most favourite and customary practices of 
 cruelty. These very practices, nevertheless. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 131 
 
 still keep their ground in some of the more 
 heathenish parts of the country ; and if it were 
 possible, that the more improved notions and 
 taste of the more respectable classes could admit 
 of any countenance being given to their revival 
 in the more civilized parts, it v^ould be found 
 that, even there, too large a portion of the people 
 is to this hour left in a disposition w^hich vs^ould 
 welcome the return of savage exhibitions. It 
 may be, that some of the most atrocious forms 
 and degrees of cruelty would not please the 
 greater number of them ; for there have been 
 instances in which an English populace has 
 shown indignation at extreme and unaccustomed 
 perpetrations of this kind, even to the extent of 
 cruelly revenging them. Not many would be 
 delighted with such scenes as those which, in 
 the Place de Grhve, used to be a gratification to 
 a multitude of all ranks of the Parisians. But 
 how many odious facts, characteristic of our 
 people, have come under every one's observa- 
 tion. 
 
 Who has iK)t seen numerous instances of the 
 dehght with which advantage is taken of weak- 
 ness or simplicity, to practise upon them some 
 sly mischief, or inflict some open mortification ; 
 and of the unrepressed glee with which many 
 spectators can witness or abet the malice ? And 
 if, in such a case, an indignant observer has 
 hazarded a remark or expostulation to any of 
 them, the full stare, and the quickly succeeding 
 
 k2 
 
] 32 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 laugh and retort, of brutal scorn, have thrown 
 open to his revolting sight the state of the recess 
 within, where the moral sentiments are ; and 
 shown how much the perceptions and notions 
 had been indebted to the cares of the instructor. 
 Could he help thinking what was deserved 
 somewhere, by individuals or by the local com- 
 munity collectively, for suffering a being to grow 
 up to quite or nearly the complete dimensions 
 and features of manhood, with so vile a thing 
 within it in substitution for what a soul should 
 be ? We need not remark, what every one has 
 noticed, how much the vulgar are amused by 
 seeing vexatious or injurious incidents, (if only 
 not quite disastrous or tragical,) befalling per- 
 sons against whom they can have no resent- 
 ment ; how ferocious often their temper and 
 means of revenge when they have causes of 
 resentment ; or how intensely delighted, (in 
 company, it is true, with many that are called 
 their betters,) in beholding several of their fel- 
 low-mortals, whether in anger or athletic com- 
 petition, covering each other with bruises, 
 deformity, and blood. 
 
 Our institutions, however, protect, in some 
 considerable degree, man against man, as being 
 framed in a knowledge of what would else 
 become of the community. But observe a 
 moment what are the dispositions of the vulgar 
 as indulged, and with little preventive interfer- 
 ence of those institutions, on the inferior animals. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 133 
 
 To a large proportion of the class it is, in their 
 youth, one of the most vivid exhilarations to 
 witness the terrors and anguish of living beings. 
 In many parts of the country it would be no 
 improbable conjecture in explanation of a savage 
 yell heard at a distance, that a company of 
 rationals may be witnessing the writhings, 
 agonies, and cries, of some animal struggling 
 for escape or for life, while it is suffering the 
 infliction, perhaps, of stones and kicks, or the 
 stroke or gash of more directly fatal instruments 
 of violence. If you hear in the clamour a 
 sudden burst of fiercer exultation, you may 
 surmise that just then the deadly blow or stab 
 has been given. There is hardly an animal on 
 the whole face of the country, of size enough, 
 and enough within reach, to be a sufficient object 
 of attention, that would not be persecuted to 
 death if no consideration of ownership inter- 
 posed. The children of the uncultivated fami- 
 lies are allowed, without a check, to exercise 
 and improve the hateful disposition, on flies, 
 young birds, and other feeble and harmless crea- 
 tures ; and they are actually encouraged to do 
 it on what, under the denomination of vermin, 
 are represented in the formal character of 
 enemies, almost in such a sense as if a moral 
 responsibihty belonged to them, and they were 
 therefore not only to be destroyed as a nuisance, 
 but deserving to be punished as offenders. 
 
 The destruction of sympathy, with the conse- 
 
134 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 quent carelessness of inflicting pain, combined 
 as this will probably be, with the love of inflict- 
 ing it, must be confirmed by the horrid spectacle 
 of slaughter all over the land ; a spectacle 
 sought for gratification by the children and youth 
 of the lower order; and in many places so 
 publicly exhibited that they cannot well avoid 
 seeing it, and its often savage prehminary cir- 
 cumstances, sometimes directly wanton aggra- 
 vations, perhaps in revenge of a struggle to 
 resist or escape, perhaps in a rage at the awk- 
 ward manner in which the victim adjusts itself 
 to a convenient position for suffering. Horrid, 
 we call the prevailing practice, because it is the 
 infliction, on millions of sentient and innocent 
 creatures every year, in what calls itself a 
 humane and christian nation, of anguish unne- 
 cessary to the purpose. And it is a flagrant 
 dishonour to such a country, and to the class 
 that virtually, by rank, and formally, by oflScial 
 station, have presided over its economy, one 
 generation after another, that so hideous a fact 
 should never, as far as we know, have been 
 deemed by the highest state authorities worth 
 even a question whether to interfere. An incon- 
 ceivable daily amount of suffering, inflicted on 
 unknown thousands of creatures, dying in slow 
 anguish, when their death might be without pain 
 as being instantaneous, is accounted no defor- 
 mity in the social system, no incongruity with 
 the national profession of a religion of which the 
 
ON POPULAll IGNORANCE. 135 
 
 essence is charily and mercy, nothing to sully 
 the polish, or offend the refinement, of what will 
 be seriously asserted to be, in its higher por- 
 tions, a preeminently civilized and humanized 
 community. Precious and well protected polish 
 and refinement, and humanity, and christian 
 civilization ! to which it is a matter of easy 
 indifference to know that, in the neighbourhood 
 of their abode, those tortures of butchery are 
 unnecessarily inflicted, which could not be ac- 
 tually witnessed by persons in whom the pre- 
 tension to these fine qualities is any thing better 
 than affectation, without sensations of horror. 
 
 They are known to be inflicted, and yet this 
 is a trifle not worth an effort toward innovation 
 on inveterate custom, on the part of the influ- 
 ential classes; who may be far more worthily 
 intent on changing the fashion of a dress, or 
 possibly some new refinement in the cookery of 
 the dead bodies of the victims. It is a matter 
 far below legislative attention ; while the powers 
 of definition are exhausted under the stupendous 
 accumulation of regulations and interdictions for 
 the good order of society. So hardened may the 
 moral sense of a community be by universal and 
 continual custom, that we are perfectly aware 
 these very remarks will provoke the ridicule of 
 many persons, including, it is possible enough, 
 some who may think it quite consistent to be 
 ostentatiously talking at the very same time of 
 Christianity and benevolent zeal. Nor will that 
 
136 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 ridicule be repressed by the notoriety of the 
 fact, that the manner of the practice referred to 
 steels and depraves, to a dreadful degree, a vast 
 number of human beings immediately employed 
 about it ; and, as a spectacle, powerfully contri- 
 butes to confirm, in a much greater number, 
 exactly that which it is, by eminence, the object 
 of moral tuition to counteract — men's disposition 
 to make hght of all suffering but their own. 
 This one thing, this not caring for what may be 
 endured by other beings made hable to suffering, 
 is the very essence of the depravity which is so 
 fatal to our race in their social constitution. 
 This selfish hardness is moral plague enough 
 even in an inactive state, as a mere carelessness 
 what other beings may suffer ; but there lurks in 
 it a mahgnity which is easily stimulated to de- 
 light in seeing or causing their suffering. And 
 yet, we repeat it, a civihzed and christian nation 
 feels not the slightest self - displacency for its 
 allowing a certain unhappy but necessary part in 
 the economy of the world to be executed, (by 
 preference to a harmless method,) in a manner 
 which probably does as much to corroborate in 
 the vulgar class this essential principle of depra- 
 vity, as all the expedients of melioration yet 
 applied are doing to expel it. 
 
 Were it not vain and absurd to muse on sup- 
 posable new principles in the constitution of the 
 moral system, there is one that we might have 
 been tempted to wish for, namely, that, of all 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 137 
 
 suffering unnecessarily and wilfully inflicted by 
 man on any class of sentient existence, a bitter 
 intimation and participation might be conveyed 
 to him through a mysterious law of nature, en- 
 forcing an avenging sympathy in severe propor- 
 tion to that suffering, on all the men, be where 
 they might, who were really accountable for its 
 being inflicted. 
 
 After children and youth are trained to be- 
 hold with something worse than hardened in- 
 difference, with a gratifying excitement, the 
 sufferings of creatures dying for the service of 
 man, it is no wonder if they are barbarous in 
 their treatment of those that serve him by their 
 life. And in fact nothing is more obvious as a 
 prevaihng disgrace to our nation, than the cruel 
 habits of the lower class toward the labouring 
 animals committed to their power. These ani- 
 mals have no security in their best condition and 
 most efficient services ; but generally the diabolic 
 disposition is the most fully exercised on those 
 that have been already the greatest sufferers. 
 Meeting, wherever we go, with some of these 
 starved, abused, exhausted figures, we shall not 
 unfrequently meet with also another figure accom- 
 panying them, — that of a ruffian, young or old, 
 who, with a visage of rage, and accents of hell, is 
 wreaking his utmost malevolence on a wretched 
 victim for being slow in performing, or quite 
 failing to perform, what the excess of loading, 
 and perhaps the feebleness of old age, have 
 
138 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 rendered difficult or absolutely impracticable ; or 
 for shrinking from an effort to be made by a 
 pressure on bleeding sores, or for losing the 
 right direction through blindness, and that itself 
 perhaps occasioned by hardship or savage vio- 
 lence. Many of the exacters of animal labour 
 really seem to resent it as a kind of presumption 
 and insult in the slave, that it should be any 
 thing else than a machine, that the living being 
 should betray under its toils that it suffers, that 
 it is pained, weary, or reluctant. And if, by 
 outrageous abuse^ it should be excited to some 
 manifestation of resentment, that is a crime for 
 which the sufferer would be likely to incur such 
 a fury and repetition of blows and lacerations as 
 to die on the spot, but for an interfering admo- 
 nition of interest against destroying such a piece 
 of property, and losing so much service. When 
 that service has utterly exhausted, often before 
 the term of old age, the strength of those 
 wretched animals, there awaits many of them 
 a last short stage of still more remorseless 
 cruelty ; that in which it is become a doubtful 
 thing whether the utmost efforts to which the 
 emaciated diseased sinking frame can be forced 
 by violence, be worth the trouble of that vio- 
 lence, the delays and accidents, and the expense 
 of the scanty supply of subsistence. As they 
 must at all events very soon perish, it has ceased 
 to be of any material consequence, on the score 
 of interest, how grossly they may be abused; 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 139 
 
 and their tormentors seem delighted with this 
 release from all restraint on their dispositions. 
 Those dispositions, as indulged in some in- 
 stances, when the miserable creatures are for- 
 mally consigned to be destroyed, cannot be 
 much exceeded by any thing we can attribute 
 to fiends. Some horrid exemplifications were 
 adduced, not as single casual circumstances, but 
 as usual practices, by a patriotic senator some 
 years since, in endeavouring to obtain a legis- 
 lative enactment in mitigation of the sufferings 
 of the brute tribes. The design vanished to 
 nothing in the House of Commons, under the 
 effect of argument and ridicule from a person 
 distinguished for intellectual cultivation ; whose 
 resistance was not only against that specific 
 measure, but avowedly against the principle 
 itself on which any measure of the same ten- 
 dency could ever be founded.* Nor could any 
 victory have pleased him better, probably, than 
 one which contributed to prolong the barbarism 
 of the people, as the best security, he deemed, 
 for their continuing fit to labour at home and 
 fight abroad. It might have added to his grati- 
 fication to hear (as was the fact) his name 
 pronounced with delight by thousands of ruffians 
 
 * Lord Erskine's memorable Bill, triumphantly scouted 
 by the late Mr. Windham. — Undoubtedly there are conside- 
 rable difficulties in the way of legislation on the subject ; but 
 an equal share of difficulty attending some other subjects — an 
 affair of revenue, for instance, or a measure for the suppression 
 of political opinion — would soon have been overcome. 
 
140 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of all classes, who regarded him as their patron 
 saint. 
 
 If any one should be inclined to interpose 
 here with a remark, that after such a reference, 
 w^e have little right to ascribe to those classes, 
 as if it were peculiarly one of their character- 
 istics, the insensibility to the sufferings of the 
 brute creation, and to number it formally among 
 the results of the " lack of knowledge," we can 
 only reply, that however those of higher order 
 may explode any attempt to make the most 
 efficient authority of the nation bear repressively 
 upon the evil, and however it may in other ways 
 be abetted by them, it is, at any rate, in those 
 inferior classes chiefly that the actual perpe- 
 trators of it are found. It is something to say 
 in favour of cultivation, that it does, generally 
 speaking, render those who have the benefit of 
 it incapable of practising, themselves, those cruel- 
 ties which they may be virtually countenancing, 
 by some things which they do, and some things 
 which they omit or refuse to do. 
 
 The proper place would perhaps have been 
 nearer the beginning of this description of the 
 characteristics of our uneducated people, for one 
 so notorious, and one entering so much into the 
 essence of the evils already named, as that we 
 mention next ; — a rude, contracted, unsteady, 
 and often perverted, sense of right and wrong in 
 general. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 141 
 
 It is curious to look into a large volume of 
 religious casuistry, the work of some divine of 
 a former age, (for instance Bishop Taylor's 
 Ductor Duhitantiumy) with the reflection what 
 a conscience disciplined in the highest degree 
 might be; and then to observe what this regu- 
 lator of the soul actually is where there has been 
 no sound discipline of the reason, and where 
 there is no deep religious sentiment to rectify 
 the perceptions in the absence of an accurate 
 intellectual discrimination of things. This sen- 
 timent being wanting, dispositions and conduct 
 cannot be taken account of according to the 
 distinction between holiness and sin ; and in the 
 absence of instructed understanding, they cannot 
 be brought to the test of the distinguishing law 
 between propriety and turpitude ; nor estimated 
 upon any comprehensive notion of utility. The 
 evidence of all this is thick and close around us; 
 so that every serious observer has been struck 
 and almost shocked to observe, in what a very 
 small degree conscience is a necessary attribute 
 of the human creature ; and how nearly a non- 
 entity the whole system of moral principles may 
 be, as to any recognition of it by an unadapted 
 spirit. While that system is of a substance 
 veritable and eternal, and stands forth in its ex- 
 ceeding breadth, marked with the strongest cha- 
 racters and prominences, it has to these persons 
 hardly the reality or definiteness of a shadow, 
 except in a few matters, if we may so express it. 
 
142 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of the grossest bulk. There must be glaring 
 evidence of something bad in what is done^ or 
 questioned whether to be done, before conscience 
 will come to its duty, or give proof of its exist- 
 ence. There must be a violent alarm of mischief 
 or danger before this drowsy and careless magis- 
 trate will interfere. And since occasions thus 
 involving flagrant evil cannot be of frequent 
 occurrence in the life of the generality of the 
 people, it is probable that many of them have 
 considerably protracted exemptions from any 
 interference of conscience at all ; it is certain 
 that they experience no such pertinacious attend- 
 ance of it, as to feel habitually a monitory inti- 
 mation, that without great thought and care they 
 will inevitably do something wrong. But what 
 may we judge and presage of the moral fortunes 
 of a sojourner, of naturally corrupt propensity, 
 in this bad world, who is not haunted, sometimes 
 to a degree of alarm, by this monitory sense, 
 through the whole course of his life ? What is 
 likely to become of him, if he shall go hither 
 and thither on the scene exempt from all sensible 
 obstruction of the many interdictions of a nature 
 too refined for any sense but the vital tenderness 
 of conscience to perceive ? 
 
 Obstructions of a more gross and palpable 
 nature he is continually meeting. A large por- 
 tion of what he is accustomed to see presents 
 itself to him in the character of boundary and 
 prohibition ; on every hand there is something 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 143 
 
 to warn him what he must not do. There are 
 high walls, and gates, and fences, and brinks of 
 torrents and precipices ; in short, an order of 
 things on all sides signifying to him, with more 
 or less of menace, — Thus far and no further. 
 And he is in a general way obsequious to this 
 arrangement. We do not ordinarily expect to 
 see him carelessly transgressing the most decided 
 of the artificial boundaries, or daring across those 
 dreadful ones of nature. But, nearly destitute 
 of the faculty to perceive, (as in coming in con- 
 tact with something charged with the element of 
 lightning,) the awful interceptive lines of that 
 other arrangement which he is in the midst of as 
 a subject of the laws of God, we see with what 
 insensibility he can pass through those prohibi- 
 tory significations of the Almighty will, which 
 are to devout men as lines streaming with an 
 infinitely more formidable than material fire. 
 And if we look on to his future course, pro- 
 ceeding under so fatal a deficiency, the con- 
 sequence foreseen is, that those lines of divine 
 interdiction which he has not conscience to per- 
 ceive as meant to deter him, he will seem as if 
 he had acquired, through a perverted will, a 
 recognition of in another quality — as temptations 
 to attract him. 
 
 But to leave these terms of generality, and 
 advert to a few particulars of illustration : — 
 Recollect how commonly persons of the class 
 described are found utterly violating truth, not 
 
144 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 in hard emergencies only, but as a habitual prac- 
 tice, and apparently without the slightest re- 
 luctance or compunction, their moral sense 
 perfectly at rest under the accumulation of a 
 thousand deliberate falsehoods. It is seen that 
 by far the greater number of them think it no 
 harm to take little unjust advantages in their 
 dealings, by deceptive management ; and very 
 many v^ould take the greatest but for fear of 
 temporal consequences ; would do it, that is to 
 say, without inquietude of conscience, in the 
 proper sense. It is the testimony of experience, 
 from persons who have had the most to transact 
 with them, that the indispensable rule of pro- 
 ceeding is to assume generally their want of 
 principle, and leave it to time and prolonged trial 
 to establish, rather slowly, the individual excep- 
 tions. Those unknowing admirers of human 
 nature, or of English character, who are dis- 
 posed to exclaim against this as an illiberal rule, 
 may be recommended to act on what they will 
 therefore deem a liberal one — at their cost. 
 
 That power of estabhshed custom, which 
 is so great, as we had occasion to shew, on 
 the moral sense of better instructed persons, 
 has its dominion complete over that of the 
 vulgar ; insomuch that the most flagrant un- 
 equivocal iniquity of a practice long suffered to 
 exist, shall hardly bring even to their mere 
 recollection the common acknowledged rule not 
 to do as we would wish not done to us. From 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 145 
 
 recent accounts it appears, that the entire coast 
 of our island is not yet clear of those people 
 called wreckers, who felt not a scruple to appro- 
 priate whatever they could seize of the lading 
 of vessels cast ashore, and even whatever was 
 worth tearing from the personal possession of 
 the unfortunate beings who might be escaping 
 but just alive from the most dreadful peril. 
 The cruelty we have so largely attributed to our 
 English vulgar, never recoils on them in self- 
 reproach. The habitual indulgence of the 
 irascible, vexatious, and malicious tempers, to 
 the plague or terror of all within reach, scarcely 
 ever becomes a subject of judicial estimate, as a 
 character hateful in the abstract, with then a 
 reflection of that estimate on the man's own 
 self. He reflects but just enough to say to 
 himself that it is all right and deserved, and 
 unavoidable too, for he is unpardonably crossed 
 and provoked ; nor will he be driven from this 
 self-approval, when it may be evident to every 
 one else that the provocations are comparatively 
 slight, and are only taken as offences by a 
 disposition habitually seeking occasions to vent 
 its spite. The inconvenience and vexation 
 incident to low libertinism, will make the 
 offenders fret at themselves indeed for having 
 been such fools, but it is in general with an 
 extremely trifling degree of the sense of guilt. 
 Suggestions of reprehension, in even the dis- 
 creetest terms, and from persons confessedly the 
 
 L 
 
146 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 best authorized to make them, would not seldom 
 be answered by a grinning defying carelessness, 
 in some instances by abusive retort ; instead of 
 any betrayed signs of even an internal acknow- 
 ledgment of deserving reproof. 
 
 And while thus the censure of a fellow-mortal 
 meets no internal testimony to own its justice, 
 this insensate self-complacency is undisturbed 
 also on the side toward heaven. A mere philo- 
 sopher, that should make little account of 
 religion, otherwise than as capable of being 
 applied to enforce and aggravate the sense of 
 obligation with respect to rules of conduct, and 
 would not, provided it may have this effect, 
 care much about its truth or falsehood, — might 
 be disposed to assert, that the ignorant and 
 debased part of the population, of this christian 
 and protestant country, are but so much the 
 worse for the riddance of some parts of the 
 superstitions of former ages. He might allege, 
 that the system which imposed so many false- 
 hoods, vain observances, and perversions of 
 moral principles, did nevertheless acknowledge 
 and enjoin some correct rules of morality, con- 
 sidered as an external practical concern. And 
 as that system pretended to be of unquestionably 
 divine authority, throughout every part of its 
 prescriptions, it impressed a religious sanction 
 on those moral injunctions, and thus infixed 
 them in the popular mind as a matter of con- 
 science toward God. Whatever of human 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 147 
 
 arrogance might intrude in dictating them, it 
 was still in reference to Hifn, ultimately, that 
 those mandates had their authority. Whereas 
 now, when those superstitions which held the 
 people so powerfully in awe, are gone, they 
 have taken away with them that recognition of 
 a divine sanction enforcing moral principles and 
 rules ; succeeded by nothing to exert the same 
 power ; since the people have not, in their 
 exemption from the superstitions of their an- 
 cestors, come under any solemn and command- 
 ing effect of the true idea of the Divine Majesty. 
 And it is undeniable that this is the state of 
 conscience among them. The vague faint notion, 
 as they conceive it, of a being who is said to be 
 the creator, governor, lawgiver, and judge, and 
 who dwells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has 
 not, to many of them, the smallest force of in- 
 timidation from evil, at least when they are in 
 health and daylight. One of the large sting- 
 armed insects of the air does not alarm them 
 less. A certain transitory fearfulness that occa- 
 sionally comes upon them, points more to the 
 Devil, and perhaps (in times now nearly gone 
 by) to the ghosts of the dead, than to the 
 Almighty. It may be, indeed, that this feeling 
 is in its ultimate principle, if it were ever fol- 
 lowed up so far, an acknowledgment of justice 
 and power in God, reaching to wicked men 
 through these mysterious agents ; who though 
 intending no service to him, but actuated by 
 
 l2 ^ 
 
148 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 dispositions of their own, malignant in the 
 greatest of them, and supposed inauspicious in 
 the others, are yet carrying into effect his hos- 
 tihty. But it is Httle beyond such proximate 
 objects of apprehension that many minds extend 
 their awe of invisible spiritual existence. Even 
 the notion really entertained by them of the 
 greatness of God, may be entertained in such a 
 manner as to have but slight power to restrain 
 the inclinations to sin, or to impress the sense of 
 guilt after it is committed. He is too great, 
 they readily say, to mind the little matters that 
 such creatures as we may do amiss ; they can 
 do him no harm. The idea, too, of his bounty, 
 is of such unworthy consistence as to be a pro- 
 tection against all conscious reproach of ingrati- 
 tude and neglect of service toward him; — he 
 has made us to need all this that it is said he 
 does for us ; and it costs him nothing, it is no 
 labour, and he is not the less rich ; and besides, 
 we have toil, and want, and plague enough, not- 
 withstanding any thing that he gives. 
 
 It is probable this unhappiness of their condi- 
 tion, oftener than any other cause, brings God 
 into their thoughts, and that as a being against 
 whom they have a complaint approaching to a 
 quarrel on account of it. And this strongly 
 assists the reaction against whatever would en- 
 force the sense of guilt on the conscience. 
 When he has done so little for us, (something 
 like this is the sentiment,) he cannot think it 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 149 
 
 any such great matter if we do sometimes come 
 a little short of his commands. There is no 
 doubt that their recollections of him as a being 
 to murmur against for their allotment, are more 
 frequent, more dwelt upon, and with more of an 
 excited feeling, than their recollections of him 
 as a being whom they ought to have loved and 
 served, but have offended against. The very 
 idea of such offence, as one of the things which 
 constitute wickedness, is so slightly conceived, 
 (because he is invisible, and has his own felicity, 
 and is secure against all injury,) that if the 
 thoughts of one of these persons should, by some 
 rare occasion, be forced into the direction of 
 unwillingly seeing his own faults, it is probable 
 his impiety would appear the most inconside- 
 rable thing in the account ; that he would easily 
 forgive himself the negation of all acts and feel- 
 ings of devotion toward the Supreme Being, and 
 the countless multiplication of insults to him by 
 profane language. 
 
 To conclude this part of the melancholy 
 statement; it may be observed of the class in 
 question, that they have but very little notion of 
 guilt, or possible guilt, in any thing but external 
 practice. That busy interior existence, which is 
 the moral person, genuine and complete ; the 
 thoughts, imaginations, volitions ; the motives, 
 projects, deliberations, devices, the indulgence 
 of the ideas of what they cannot or dare not 
 practically realize, — all this, we have reason to 
 
1 50 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 believe, passes nearly exempted from jurisdiction, 
 even of that feeble and undecisive kind which may 
 occasionally attempt an interference with their 
 actions. They do indeed take such notice of the 
 quahty of these things within, as to be aware 
 that some of them are not to be disclosed in 
 their communications ; which prudential caution 
 has of course httle to do with conscience, when 
 the things so withheld are internally cherished 
 in perfect disregard of the Omniscient Observer, 
 and with hardly the faintest monition that the 
 essence of the guilt is the same, with only a 
 difference in degree, in intending or deliberately 
 desiring an evil, and in acting it. 
 
 It is not natural obtuseness of mental faculty 
 that we are attributing, all this while, to the 
 uneducated class of our people, in thus exposing 
 the defectiveness of their discernment between 
 right and wrong. If it were, there might arise 
 somewhat of the consolation afforded in con- 
 templating some of the very lowest of the savage 
 tribes of mankind, by the idea that such outcasts 
 of the rational nature must stand very nearly 
 exempt from accountableness, through absolute 
 natural want of mind. But in the barbarians 
 of our country we shall often observe a very 
 competent, and now and then an abundant, 
 share of native sense. We may see it evinced 
 in respect to the very questions of morahty, in 
 cases where they are quite compelled, as will 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 151 
 
 occasionally happen, to feel themselves brought 
 within the cognisance of one or other of its 
 plainest rules. In such cases we have witnessed 
 a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming 
 almost our admiration. What contrivance of 
 deception and artful evasion. What dexterity 
 of quibble, and captious objection, and petty 
 sophistry. What vigilance to observe how the 
 plea in justification or excuse takes effect, and, 
 if they perceive it does not succeed, what address 
 in shding into a different one. What quickness 
 to avail themselves of any mistake, or apparent 
 concession, in the examiner or reprover. What 
 copious rhetoric in exaggeration of the cause 
 which tempted to do wrong, or of the great 
 good hoped to be effected by the little deviation 
 from the right, — a good surely enough to excuse 
 so trifling an impropriety. What facility of 
 placing between themselves and the censure, the 
 recollected example of some good man who has 
 been " overtaken in a fault." 
 
 Here is mind, after all, we have been prompted 
 to exclaim ; mind educating itself to evil, in 
 default of that discipline which should have 
 educated it to good. How much of the wisdom 
 of evil, (if we may be allowed the expression,) 
 there is faculty enough in the neglected corrupt 
 popular mass of this nation to attain, by the 
 exercise into which the individual's mind is 
 carried by its own impulse, and in which he 
 may every where and every hour find ample 
 
152 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 co-operation. Each of these self-improvers in 
 depraved sense has the advantage of finding 
 himself among a great tribe of similar im- 
 provers, forming an immense school, as if for 
 the promotion of this very purpose ; where they 
 all teach by a competition in learning; where 
 the rude faculty which is not expanded into in- 
 telligence is, however, sharpened into cunning; 
 where the spirit which cannot grow into an 
 eagle, may take the form and action of a snake. 
 This advantage, — that there should not be a 
 diminution of the superabundant plenty of 
 associates always at hand, to assist each man in 
 making the most of his native intellect for its 
 least worthy use, — has been from age to age 
 secured to oiu populace, as if it had been the 
 most valuable birthright of Englishmen. What- 
 ever else the person born to the inheritance of 
 low life was destined to find in it, the national 
 state had made as sure to him as it had before 
 made the same privilege to his ancestors, that 
 the generality of his equals should be found fit 
 and ready to work with him in the acquirement 
 of a depraved shrewdness. 
 
 But while the bulk of the people have been^ 
 in every period, abandoned to such a process of 
 educating themselves and one another, where 
 has been that character of parental guardianship, 
 which seems to be ascribed when poets, orators, 
 and patriots, are mspired with tropes, and talk 
 of England and her children ? This imperial 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 153 
 
 matron of their rhetoric seems to have little 
 cared how much she might be disgraced in the 
 larger portion of her progeny, or how little cause 
 they might have to all eternity to remember her 
 with gratitude. She has had far other concern 
 about them, and employment for them, than 
 that of their being taught the value of their 
 spiritual nature, and carefully trained to be 
 enhghtened, good, and happy. Laws against 
 crime, it is true, she has enacted for them in 
 liberal quantity. She has also maintained public 
 sabbath observances to remind them of religion, 
 of which observances the reading of a Book of 
 Sports was, at one period, long after her adoption 
 of the reformation in religion, an indispensable 
 part. But she might plainly see what such 
 provisions did not accomplish. It was a glaring 
 fact before her eyes, that the majority of her 
 children had far more of the mental character 
 of a colony from some barbarian nation, than 
 of that which an enlightened and christian state 
 might have been expected to impart. She had 
 most ample resources indeed for supplying the 
 remedy; but, provided that the productions of 
 the soil and the workshop were duly forth- U 
 coming, she thought it of no consequence, it 
 should seem, that the operative hands belonged 
 to degraded minds. And then, too, as at all 
 times her lofty ambition destined a good pro- 
 portion of them to the consumption of martial 
 service, she perhaps judged that the less they 
 
154 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 were trained to think, the more fit they might 
 be to be actuated mechanically, as an instru- 
 ment of blind impetuous force. Or perhaps she 
 thought it would be rather an inconsistency, to 
 be making much of the inner existence of a 
 thing which was to be, in frequent wholesale 
 lots, sent off to be cut or dashed to pieces.* 
 And besides, a certain measure of instruction to 
 think, especially if consisting, in a considerable 
 part, of the inculcation of religion, might have 
 done something to disturb that notion, (so 
 worthy to have been transferred from the Ma- 
 homedan creed,) which she was by no means 
 desirous to expel from her fleets and armies, 
 that death for " king and country" clears off all 
 accounts for sin. 
 
 Let our attention be directed a little while to 
 the effects of the privation of knowledge, as 
 they may be seen conspicuous in the several 
 parts of the economy of life, in the uneducated 
 part of the community. Observe those people 
 in their daily occupations. None of us need be 
 told that, of the prodigious diversity of manual 
 employments, some consist of, or include, ope- 
 rations of such minuteness or complexity, and 
 so much demanding nicety, arrangement, or 
 combination, as to necessitate the constant and 
 
 * " Killed off," was the sentimental phrase emitted, quite 
 gravely, in parliament, by the accomplished senator named in 
 a former page. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 155 
 
 almost entire attention of the mind; nor that 
 all of them must require its full attention at 
 times, at particular stages, changes, and adjust- 
 ments, of the work. We allow this its full 
 weight, to forbid any extravagant notion of how 
 much it is possible to think of other things 
 during the working time. It is however to be 
 recollected, that persons of a class superior to 
 the numerous one we have in view, take the 
 chief share of those portions of the arts and 
 manufactures which require the most of mental 
 effort, — those which demand extreme precision, 
 or inventive contrivance, or taste, or scientific 
 skill. We may also take into the account of the 
 allotment of employments to the uncultivated 
 multitude, how much facility is acquired by 
 habit, how much use there is of instrumental 
 mechanism, (the grand exempter from the re- 
 sponsibility that would lie on the mind,) and 
 how merely general and very slight an attention 
 is exacted in the ordinary course of some of the 
 occupations. These things being considered, 
 we may venture perhaps to assume, on an 
 average of those employments, that the persons 
 engaged in them might be, as much at least as 
 one third part of the time, without detriment to 
 the manual performance, giving the thoughts to 
 other things with attention enough for interest 
 and improvement. This is particularly true 
 of the more ordinary parts of the labours of 
 agriculture. 
 
156 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 But as the case at present is, what does be- 
 come, during such portion of the time, of the 
 ethereal essence which inhabits the corporeal 
 labourer, this spirit created, it is commonly said 
 and without contradiction, for thought, know- 
 ledge, religion, and immortality? If we be 
 really to beheve this doctrine of its nature and 
 destiny, (for we are not sure that politicians 
 think so,) can we know without regret, that in 
 very many of the persons in the situations sup- 
 posed, it suffers a dull absorption, subsides into 
 the mere physical nature, is sunk and sleeping 
 in the animal warmth and functions, and lulled 
 and rocked, as it were, in its lethargy, by the 
 bodily movements in the works which it is not 
 necessary for it to keep habitually awake to 
 direct ? And its obhgation to keep just enough 
 awake to see to the right performance of 
 the work, seems to give a licensed exemption 
 from any other stirring of its faculties. The 
 employment is something to be minded, in a 
 general way, though but now and then requiring 
 a pointed attention ; and therefore this said 
 intellectual being, if uninformed and unexer- 
 cised, will feel no call to mind any thing else : 
 as a person retained for some service which 
 demands but occasionally an active exercise, 
 will justify the indolence which declines taking 
 in hand any other business in the intervals, 
 under the pretext that he has his appointment ; 
 and so, when not under the immediate calls of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 157 
 
 that appointment, he will trifle or go to sleep, 
 even in the full light of day, with an easy con- 
 science. 
 
 But here we are to beware of falling into the 
 inadvertency of appearing to say, that the 
 labouring classes, in this country and age, have 
 actually this full exemption, during their em- 
 ployments, from all exercise of thought beyond 
 that which is immediately requisite for the right 
 performance of their work. It is true that there 
 is little enough of any such mental activity 
 directed to the instructive uses we were sup- 
 posing. But while the partial occupation of the 
 thoughts (of course in an irregular and dis- 
 continuous, but still a beneficial manner) with 
 topics and facts of what may be called intel- 
 lectual and moral interest — an occupation as- 
 sumed to be compatible, in a considerable 
 degree, with divers of the manual operations — 
 is a thing to which most among the labouring 
 classes are strangers, many of them are equally 
 strangers to an easy vacancy of mind ; expe- 
 riencing amidst their employments a severe 
 arrest of those thoughts which the mere employ- 
 ment itself may leave free. During the little 
 more than mechanical action of their hands and 
 eyes, the circumstances of their condition press 
 hard into their minds. The lot of some of 
 those classes is placed in a melancholy dis- 
 proportion between what must be given to the 
 cares and toils for a bare subsistence> and what 
 
158 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 can, at most, be given to the interests of the 
 nobler part of their nature, either during their 
 actual work or in its intervals. It is a sad 
 spectacle to behold so many myriads of spiritual 
 beings (we should repeat the proviso that we 
 may call them so without being suspected to 
 forget that their proper calling is to work with 
 their hands) doomed to consume a proportion 
 so little short of the whole of their vigour and 
 time, in just merely supporting so many bodies 
 in the struggle to live. 
 
 When it is in special relation to the present 
 times that we speak of this struggle to live, we 
 of course mean by it something more than that 
 circumstance of the general lot of humanity 
 which is expressed in the sentence, " In the 
 sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread." 
 We put the emphasis on the peculiar aggra- 
 vation of that circumstance in this part of the 
 world in this and recent times, by the adven- 
 titious effect of some dreadful disorder of the 
 social economy, in consequence of which the 
 utmost exertions of the body and mind toge- 
 ther but barely suffice in so many cases, in 
 some hardly do suffice, for the mere protrac- 
 tion of life ; comfortable life being altoge- 
 ther out of the question. The course of the 
 administration of the civihzed states, and the 
 recent dire combustion into which they have 
 almost unanimously rushed, as in emulation 
 which of them should with the least reserve. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE* 159 
 
 and with the most desperate rapidity, annihi- 
 late the resources which should have been for 
 the subsistence and competence of their people, 
 have resulted in such destitution and misery in 
 this country as were never known before, except 
 as immediately inflicted by the local visitation 
 of some awful calamity. The state of very 
 many of our people, at this hour, is nearly what 
 might be conceived as the consequence of a 
 failure of the accustomed produce of the earth.* 
 There is no wish to deny or underrate the 
 additions made to the evil by the intervention 
 of causes, whose operation admits of being 
 traced in some measure distinctly from the 
 effect of this grand one. They may be traced 
 in an operation which is distinguishable ; but it 
 were most absurd to pretend that they, that 
 any causes, can have had their operation in 
 independence of that cause which has invaded 
 with its effects every thing that has an existence 
 or a name in the social system. And it were 
 simply monstrous to attribute the main substance 
 of so wide and oppressive an evil to causes of 
 any debateable quality and subtle speculation, 
 while there is glaring in sight a cause of stu- 
 pendous magnitude which, (unless the nature 
 of all things were reversed,) could not possibly do 
 otherwise than produce immense and calamitous 
 
 * In the interval since this was written there have been 
 partial, temporary, and precarious alleviations ; but nothing 
 comprehensively and permanently remedial. 
 
160 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 effects. It would be as if a man were prying 
 about for this and the other cause of damage, 
 to account for the aspect of a region which has 
 recently been devastated by inundations or 
 earthquakes. It has become much a fashion to 
 explain the distresses of a country on any prin- 
 ciples rather than those which are taught by 
 all history, and prominently manifest in the 
 nature of things. And airs of superior intelli- 
 gence shall be assumed, on hearing a plain man 
 fix the main charge of national exhaustion and 
 distress on the nation's consuming its own 
 strength in an unquenchable fury to destroy that 
 of others ; just as if such madness had never 
 been known to result in poverty and distress, 
 and it were perfectly inexplicable how it should ! 
 This is partly an affectation of science, accom- 
 panied, it is likely, by somewhat of that sincere 
 extravagance with which the acquirer of any 
 new principles in a science is apt to account 
 them the comprehension of all wisdom, nos- 
 trums that will explain every thing. But we 
 suspect that in many instances this substitution 
 of subordinate causes for a great substantial 
 one, proceeds from something mud| worse than 
 such affectation or self-duped extravagance. It 
 is from a resolute determination that martial 
 glory shall maintain its ground in human ido- 
 latry, and that wars and their promoters shall be 
 justified at all hazards. 
 
 We were wishing to introduce a suggestion. 
 
ON POPULAll IGNORANCE. 161 
 
 how the labouring people's thoughts might be 
 partly employed, during their daily task, and 
 consistently with industry and good workman- 
 ship. But what a state of things is exhibited 
 where the very name of industry, the virtue 
 universally honoured, the topic of so many 
 human and divine inculcations, cannot be spoken 
 without offering a bitter insult ; where the heavy 
 toil, denounced on man for his transgression, 
 in the same sentence as death, is in vain im- 
 plored as the greatest possible privilege ; or 
 thought of in despair, as a blessing too great 
 to be attainable ; and when the reply of the 
 artisan, to an unwitting admonition, that even 
 amidst his work he might have some freedom 
 for^useful thinking, may be, *' Thinking ! I have 
 no work to confine my thinking; I may, for 
 that, employ it all on other subjects ; but those 
 subjects are, whether I please or not, the plenty 
 and luxury in which many creatures of the same 
 kind as myself are rioting, and the starvation 
 which I and my family are suffering." 
 
 We hope in Providence, more than in any 
 wisdom or disposition shown by men, that this 
 melancholy state of things will be alleviated, 
 otherwise than by a reduction of number through 
 the diseases generated by utter penury. We 
 trust the time will come when the christian 
 monitor shall no longer be silenced by the ap- 
 prehension of such a reply to the suggestion he 
 wishes to make to the humble class, that they 
 
 M 
 
162 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 should strive against being reduced to mere 
 machines amidst their manual employments ; 
 that it is miserable to have the whole mental 
 ^ existence shrunk and shrivelled as it were to the 
 breadth of the material they are working upon ; 
 that the noble interior agent, which lends itself 
 to maintain the external activity, and direct the 
 operations required of the bodily powers for the 
 body's welfare, has eminently a right and claim 
 to have employments on its own account, during 
 such parts of those operations as do not of 
 necessity monopolize its attention. It may 
 claim, in the superintendence of these, a privi- 
 lege analogous to that possessed in the general 
 direction of subordinate agents by a man of 
 science, who will interfere as often as it is neces- 
 sary, but will not give up all other thought and 
 employment to be a constant mere looker on, 
 during such parts of the operations as are of so 
 ordinary a nature that he could not really fix 
 his attention on them. 
 
 But how is the mind of the labourer or artisan 
 to be delivered from the blank and stupified 
 state, during the parts of his employment that 
 do not necessarily engross his thoughts ? How, 
 but by its having within some store of subjects 
 for thought ; in a word, by the possession of 
 knowledge ? How can it be sensibly alive and 
 active, when it is placed fully and decidedly 
 out of communication with all things that are 
 friendly to intellectual life, all things that 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 163 
 
 apply a beneficial stimulus to the faculties, all 
 things, of this world or another, that are the 
 most inviting or commanding to thought and 
 emotion ? We can imagine this ill-fated spirit, 
 especially if by nature of the somewhat finer 
 temperament, thus detached from all vital con- 
 nexion, secluded from the whole universe, and 
 inclosed as by a prison wall, — we can imagine 
 it sometimes moved with an indistinct longing 
 for its appropriate interests; and going round 
 and round by this dark dead wall, to seek for 
 any spot where there might be a chance of 
 escape, or any crevice where a living element 
 for the soul transpires ; and then, as feeling it 
 all in vain, dejectedly resigning itself again to its 
 doom. Some ignorant minds have instinctive 
 impulses of this kind ; though far more of them 
 are so deeply stupified as to be habitually safe 
 from any such inquietude. But let them have 
 received, in their youth and progressively after- 
 wards, a considerable measure of interesting in- 
 formation, respecting, for instance, the many 
 striking objects on the globe they inhabit, the 
 memorable events of past ages, the origin and 
 uses of remarkable works within their view, re- 
 maining from ancient times ; the causes of effects 
 and phenomena familiar to their observation as 
 now unintelligible facts ; the prospects of man, 
 from the relation he stands in to time, and eter- 
 nity, and God, explained by the great principles 
 and facts of religion, and that religion declared 
 
 m2 
 
164 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 by a direct revelation from heaven. Let there 
 be fixed in their knowledge so many ideas of 
 these kinds, as might be imparted by a compa- 
 ratively humble education, (one quite compatible 
 with the destination to a life of ordinary employ- 
 ment,) and even involuntarily the thoughts would 
 often recur to these subjects, in those moments 
 and hours when the manual occupation can, and 
 actually will, be prosecuted with but little of 
 exclusive attention. Slight incidents, casual ex- 
 pressions, would sometimes suggest these sub- 
 jects; by association they would suggest one 
 another. The mere re -action of a somewhat 
 cultivated spirit against invading dulness, might 
 recall some of the more amusing and elating 
 ones ; and they would fall like a gleam of sun- 
 shine on the imagination. An emotion of con- 
 science, a self-reflection, an occurring question of 
 duty, a monitory sensation of defective health, 
 would sometimes point to the serious and solemn 
 ones. The mind might thus go a great way, to 
 recreate or profit itself, and, on coming back 
 again, find all safe in the processes of the field 
 or the loom. The man would thus come from 
 these processes wdth more than the bare earn- 
 ings to set against the fatigue. There would 
 thus be scattered some appearances to entertain, 
 and some sources and productions to refresh, 
 over what were else a dead and barren flat of 
 existence. 
 
 There is no romancing in all this ; we have 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 165 
 
 known instances of its verification to a very 
 pleasing and exemplary extent. We have heard 
 persons of the class in question tell of the ex- 
 hilarating imaginations, or solemn reflections, 
 which, through the reminiscences of what they 
 had read in youth or more advanced years, had 
 visited their minds ; and put them as it were in 
 communication for a while with diversified, re- 
 mote, and elevated objects, while in their humble 
 employments under the open sky or the do- 
 mestic roof. And is not this, (if it be true, 
 after all, that the intellectual immortal nature is 
 by emphasis the man,) is not this vastly better 
 than that this mind should lie nearly as dormant, 
 during the labourer's hours of business, as his 
 attendant of the canine species shall be some- 
 times seen to do in the corner of the field where 
 he is at work ? 
 
 But perhaps it will be said, that the minds of the 
 uncvdtivated order are not generally in this state 
 of utter inanity during their common employ- 
 ments ; but are often awake and busy enough in 
 recollections, fancies, projects, and the tempers 
 appropriate ; and that they abundantly shew this 
 when they stop sometimes in their work to talk, 
 or talk as they are proceeding in it. So much 
 the stronger, we answer, the argument for sup- 
 plying them with useful knowledge ; for it were 
 better their mental being were sunk in lethargy, 
 than busy among the reported, recollected, or 
 imagined transactions, the wishes, and the 
 
166 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 schemings, which will be the most likely to 
 occupy the minds of persons abandoned to 
 ignorance, vulgarity, and therefore probably to 
 low vice. 
 
 We may add to the representation, the man- 
 ner in which they spend the part of their time 
 not demanded for the regular, or the occasional, 
 exercise of their industry. It is not to be denied 
 that many of them have too much truth in their 
 pleading that, with the exception of Sunday, 
 they have little remission of their toils till they 
 are so weary that the remainder of the time is 
 needed for complete repose. This is particularly 
 the case of the females, especially those who 
 have the chief cares and the actual work of a 
 family. Nevertheless, it is within our constant 
 observation that a considerable proportion of the 
 men, a large one of the younger men, in the less 
 heavily oppressed divisions of our population, do 
 in fact include, for substance, their manual em- 
 ployments within such limits of time, as often to 
 leave several hours in the day to be spent nearly 
 as they please. And in what manner, for the 
 most part, is this precious time expended by 
 those of no mental cultivation ? It is true, 
 again, that in many departments of labour, a 
 diligent exertion during even this limited space 
 of the day, occasions such a degree of lassitude 
 and heaviness as to render it almost inevitable, 
 especially in certain seasons of the year, to 
 surrender some moments of the spare time. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 167 
 
 beyond what is necessary for the humble repast, 
 to a kind of listless subsidence of all the powers 
 of both body and mind. But after all these 
 allowances fully conceded, a great number in 
 the class under consideration have in some days 
 several hours, and in the whole six days of the 
 week, on an average of the year, very many 
 hours, to be given, as they choose, to useful 
 purposes or to waste ; and again we ask, where 
 the mind itself has been left waste how is that 
 time mostly expended ? 
 
 If the persons are of a phlegmatic tempera- 
 ment, we shall often see them just simply anni- 
 hilating those portions of time. They will for 
 an hour, or for hours together, if not disturbed 
 by some cause from without, sit on a bench, 
 or lie down on a bank or hillock, or lean on a 
 wall, or fill the fire-side chair ; yielded up to 
 utter vacancy and torpor, not asleep perhaps, 
 but more lost to mental existence than if they 
 were; since the dreams, that would probably 
 visit their slumbers, would be a more lively train 
 of ideas than any they have awake. Of a piece 
 with this is the habit, among many of this order 
 of people, of giving formally to sleep as much 
 as one-third part, sometimes considerably more, 
 of the twenty-four hours. Certainly there are 
 innumerable cases in which infirmity, care, 
 fatigue, and the comfortlessness and penury of 
 the humble dwelHng, effectually plead for a large 
 allowance of this balm of obUvion. But very 
 
168 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 many surrender themselves to this excess from 
 destitution of any thing to keep their minds 
 awake, especially in the evenings of tiie winter. 
 What a contrast is here suggested to the imagi- 
 nation of those who have read Dr. Henderson's, 
 and other recent descriptions, of the habits of the 
 people of Iceland ! 
 
 These, however, are their most harmless 
 modes of wasting the time. For, while we might 
 think of the many hours merged by them in 
 apathy and needless sleep, with a wish that 
 those hours could be recovered to the account 
 of their existence, we might well wish that the 
 hours could be struck out of it which they may 
 sometimes give, instead, to conversation ; in 
 parties where ignorance, coarse vulgarity, and 
 profaneness, are to support the dialogue, on 
 topics the most to their taste ; always including, 
 as the most welcome to that taste, the depra- 
 vities and scandals of the neighbourhood ; while 
 all the reproach and ridicule, expended with the 
 wannest good will on those depravities, have 
 the strange result of making the censors the less 
 disinclined themselves to practise them, and 
 only a little better instructed how to do it with 
 impunity. In many instances there is the addi- 
 tional mischief, that these assemblings for cor- 
 rupt communication find their resort at the 
 public-house, where intemperance and ribaldry 
 may season each other, if the pecuniary means 
 for the former ingredient can be afforded, even 
 
. ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 169 
 
 at the cost of distress at home. — But without 
 including depravity of this degree, the worthless- 
 ness of the communications of a number of 
 grossly ignorant associates is easy to be ima- 
 gined, besides that most of us have been made 
 judges of their quality by numberless occasions 
 of unavoidably hearing samples of them. 
 
 In the finer seasons of the year, mucU of 
 
 these leisure spaces of time can be expended 
 
 out of doors ; and we have still only to refer to 
 
 every one's own observation of the account to 
 
 which they are turned, in the lives of beings 
 
 whose lot allows but so contracted a portion 
 
 of time to be, at the best, applied directly to 
 
 the highest purposes of life. — • Here the hater 
 
 of all such schemes of improvement, as would 
 
 threaten to turn the lower order into what that 
 
 hater may probably call Methodists, (a term 
 
 we venture to interpret for him as meaning 
 
 thoughtful beings and christians,) comes in with 
 
 a ready cant of humanity and commiseration. 
 
 And why, he says, with an affected indignation 
 
 of philanthropy, why should not the poor 
 
 creatures enjoy a little fresh air and cheerful 
 
 sunshine, and have a chance for keeping their 
 
 health, confined as many of them are, for the 
 
 greatest part of the time, in narrow squalid 
 
 rooms, unwholesome work-shops, and every 
 
 sort of disagreeable places and employments ? 
 
 Very true, we answer; and why should not 
 
 numbers of them be collected in groups by the 
 
170 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 road side, in readiness to find in whatever 
 passes there occasions for gross jocularity; prac- 
 tising some impertinence, or uttering some 
 jeering scurrility, at the expense of persons 
 going by ; shouting with laughter at the success 
 of the annoyance, or to make it successful ; and 
 all this blended with infernal imprecations, as 
 the very life of the hilarity? Or why should 
 not the boldest spirits among them form a 
 little conventicle for cursing, blaspheming, and 
 blackguard obstreperousness in the street, about 
 the entrance of one of the haunts of intoxica- 
 tion ; where they are perfectly safe from that 
 worse mischief of a gloomy fanaticism, with 
 which they might have been smitten if seduced 
 to frequent the meeting-house twenty paces 
 off? Or why should not the children, grow- 
 ing into the stage called youth, be turned loose 
 through the lanes, roads, and fields, to form a 
 brawling impudent rabble, trained by their asso- 
 ciation to every low vice, and ambitiously emu- 
 lating, in voice, visage, and manners, the ruffians 
 and drabs of maturer growth ? Or v/hy should 
 not the young men and women collect in clusters, 
 or range about or beyond the neighbourhood in 
 bands, for revel, frolic, and all kinds of coarse 
 mirth, to come back late at night to quarrel 
 with their wretched elders, who perhaps envy 
 them their capacity for such wild gaieties and 
 strollings, while rating them for their disorderly 
 habits? We say, where can be the harm of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 171 
 
 all this ? What reasonable and benevolent man 
 would think of making any objection to it? 
 Reasonable and benevolent, — for these are qua- 
 lities expressly boasted by the opposers of an 
 improved education of the people, while in such 
 opposition they virtually avow their approba- 
 tion, their willing tolerance at least, of all that 
 is here described. 
 
 We have allowed most fully the plea of how 
 little time, comparatively, could be afforded to 
 the concern of mental improvement by the 
 lower classes from their indispensable employ- 
 ments ; and also that of the consequent fatigue, 
 causing a temporary incapacity of effort in any 
 other way. But this latter plea cannot be ad- 
 mitted without great abatement in the case of 
 our neglected young people of the working 
 classes ; for when we advert to their actual 
 habits, we see that, nevertheless, time, strength, 
 and wakefulness, and spring and spirit for exer- 
 tion, are found for a vast deal of busy diversion, 
 much of it blended with such folly as tends to vice. 
 
 If such is the manner in which the spare 
 time of the week-days goes to waste and worse, 
 the Sunday is welcomed as giving scope for 
 the same things on a larger scale. It is very 
 striking to consider, that several millions, we 
 may safely assert, of our English people, arrived 
 at what should be years of discretion, are almost 
 completely destitute of any manner of conscience 
 respecting this seventh part of time ; not merely 
 
172 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 as to any required consecration of it to religion, 
 but as to its being under any claim or of any 
 worth at all, otherwise than for amusement. It 
 is actually regarded by them as a section of 
 time far less under obligation than any other. 
 They take it as so absolutely at their free dis- 
 posal, by a right so exclusively vested in their 
 taste and will, that a demand made even in 
 behalf of their own most important interests is 
 contemptuously repelled as a sanctimonious im- 
 pertinence. If the idea occurs at all (with mul- 
 titudes it never does) of claims which they have 
 heard that God should make on the hours, it is 
 dismissed with the thought that it really cannot 
 signify to him how creatures, condemned by his 
 appointment to toil all the rest of the week, 
 may wish to spend this one day, on which the 
 secular taskmaster manumits them, and He, the 
 spiritual one, might surely do as much. An 
 immense number pay no attention whatever to 
 any sort of religious worship ; and many of 
 those that do appropriate an hour or two to 
 such an observance, do so, some of them as 
 merely a diversification of amusement, and the 
 others by way of taking a license of exemption 
 from any further accountableness for the manner 
 in which they may spend the day. It is the 
 natural consequence of all this, that there is 
 more folly, if not more crime, committed on this 
 than on all the other six days together. 
 
 Thus man, at least ignorant man, is unfit to 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 173 
 
 be trusted with any thing under heaven ; since 
 a remarkable appointment for raising the general 
 ten our of moral existence, has with these per- 
 sons the effect of sinking it. There is inter- 
 posed, at frequent regular intervals throughout 
 the series of their days, a richer vein, as it were, 
 of time. The improvement of this, in a manner 
 by no means strained to the austerity of exer- 
 cise prescribed in the Puritan rules, might 
 diffuse a worth and a grace over all the time 
 between, and assist them against the tendency 
 there may be in its necessary habits and em- 
 ployments to depress the intelhgent nature into 
 meanness or debasement. The space which 
 they are passing over is marked, at near inter- 
 vals, with broad lines of a benignant light, which 
 might spread an appearance of mild lustre over 
 the whole extent as contemplated in retrospect ; 
 but how many, in looking back when near the 
 end of their progress, have to perceive the 
 shade rendered darker by the very spaces where 
 that light had been shed from heaven. 
 
 The Sundays of those who do not improve 
 them to a good purpose, will infallibly be per- 
 verted to a bad one. But it were still a melan- 
 choly account if we could regard them as merely 
 standing for nothing, as a blank in the hfe of 
 this class of the people. It is a deeply unhappy 
 spectacle and reflection, to see a man of perhaps 
 more than seventy sunk in the grossness and 
 apathy of an almost total ignorance of all 
 
174 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the most momentous subjects, and then to 
 consider, that, since he came to an age of some 
 natural capacity for the exercise of his mind, 
 there have been more than three thousand Sun- 
 days. In their long succession they were his 
 time. That is to say, he had the property in 
 them which every man has in duration ; they 
 were present to him, he had them, he spent 
 them. Perhaps some compassionate friend may 
 have been pleading in his behalf, — Alas ! what 
 opportunity, what time, has the poor mortal 
 ever had ? His lot has been to labour hard 
 through the week throughout almost his whole 
 life. Yes, we answer, but he has had three 
 thousand Sundays ; what would not even the 
 most moderate improvement of so very large a 
 sum of hours have done for him ? But the ill- 
 fated man, (perhaps rejoins the commiserating 
 pleader,) grew up from his childhood in utter 
 ignorance of any use he ought to make of time 
 which his necessary employment would allow 
 him to waste. There, we reply, you strike the 
 mark. Sundays are of no value, nor bibles, 
 nor the enlarged knowledge of the age, nor 
 heaven nor earth, to beings brought up in 
 estrangement from all right discipline. And 
 therefore we are pleading for the schemes and 
 institutions which will not let human beings be 
 thus brought up. 
 
 In so pleading, we happily can appeal to a 
 conspicuous fact in evidence that the intellectual 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 175 
 
 and religious culture, in the introductory stages 
 of life, tends to secure that the persons so trained 
 shall be, when they are come to maturity, much 
 more sensible than the uncultivated, of the 
 value of means and opportunities, and more 
 disposed to profit by them. Observe the num- 
 bers now attending, with a not unbecoming 
 deportment, public worship and instruction, as 
 compared with what the proportion is remem- 
 bered or recorded to have been half a century 
 since, or any time previous to the great exertions 
 of benevolence to save the children of the inferior 
 classes from preserving the mental likeness of 
 their forefathers. 
 
 It can be testified also, by persons whose 
 observation has been the longest in the habit of 
 following children and youth from the instruc- 
 tion of the school institutions into mature life, 
 that in a gratifying number of instances, they 
 have been seen permanently retaining too much 
 love of improvement, and too much of the habit 
 of an useful employment of their minds, to sink, 
 in their ordinary daily occupations, into that 
 wretched inanity we were representing; or to 
 consume the free intervals of time in the listless- 
 ness, or worthless gabble, or vain sports, of which 
 their neighbours furnished plenty of example 
 and temptation. 
 
 These representations have partly included, 
 what we may yet specify distinctly as one of the 
 
176 ON POPULAR IGiNORANXE. 
 
 unhappy effects of gross ignorance — a degraded 
 state of domestic society. 
 
 Whatever is of a nature to render indivi- 
 duals uninteresting or offensive to one another, 
 has a specially bad effect among them as mem- 
 bers of a family ; because there is in that form 
 of community itself a peculiar tendency to fall 
 below the level of dignified and complacent 
 social life. — A number of persons cannot be 
 placed in a state of social communication, with- 
 out having a certain sense of claiming from one 
 another a conduct meant and adapted to please. 
 It is expected that a succession of efforts should 
 be made for this purpose, with a willingness of 
 each individual to forego, in little things, his 
 own inclination or convenience. This is all 
 very well when the society is voluntary, and the 
 parties can separate when the cost is felt to be 
 greater than the pleasure. Under this advan- 
 tage of being able soon to separate, even a 
 company \)f strangers casually assembled will 
 often recognize the claim and conform to the 
 law; with a certain indistinct sentiment par- 
 taking of reciprocal gratitude for the disposition 
 which is so accommodating. But the members 
 of the domestic community also have each this 
 same feeling which demands a mutual effort 
 and self-denial to please, while the condition of 
 their association is adverse to their yielding 
 what they thus respectively claim. Theirs, when 
 once it is formed, is not exactly a voluntary 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 177 
 
 companionship, and it is one of undefinable 
 continuance. The claim therefore seems as if 
 it were to be of a prolongation interminable, 
 while the grateful feeling for the concession is 
 the less for the more compulsory bond of the 
 association. And to be thus required, in a com- 
 munity which must not be dissolved, and in a 
 series that reaches away beyond calculation, to 
 exercise a self-restraint on their wills and hu- 
 mours in order to please one another, goes so 
 hard against the great principle of human feel- 
 ing — namely each one's preference of pleasing 
 himself — that there is a habitual impulse of 
 reaction against the claim. This shows itself 
 in their deportment, which has the appearance 
 of a practical expression of so many individuals 
 that they will maintain each his own freedom. 
 Hence the absence, very commonly, in domestic 
 society, of the attentiveness, the tone of civility, 
 the promptitude of compliance, the habit of 
 little accommodations, voluntary and supernu- 
 merary, which are so observable in the inter- 
 course of friends, acquaintance, and often, as we 
 have said, even of strangers. 
 
 And then consider, in so close a kind of 
 community, what near and intimate witnesses 
 they are of all one another's faults, weaknesses, 
 tempers, perversities ; of whatever is offensive 
 in manner, or unseemly in habit; of all the 
 irksome, humiliating, or even ludicrous, circum- 
 stances and situations. And also, in this close 
 
 N 
 
178 ON POPULAR IGNORA!^CE. 
 
 association, the bad moods, the strifes, and 
 resentments, are pressed into immediate lasting 
 corrosive contact with whatever should be the 
 most vital to social happiness. If there be, 
 into the account, the wants, anxieties, and vex- 
 ations of severe poverty, they will generally 
 aggravate all that is destructive to domestic 
 complacency and decorum. 
 
 Now add gross ignorance to all this, and see 
 what the picture will be. How many families 
 we have seen where the parents were only the 
 older and stronger animals than their children, 
 whom they could teach nothing but the methods 
 and tasks of labour. They naturally could not 
 be the mere companions, for alternate play and 
 quarrel, of their children, and were disqualified 
 by mental rudeness to be their respected guar- 
 dians. There were about them these young and 
 rising forms, containing the inextinguishable 
 principle, which was capable of entering on an 
 endless progression of wisdom, goodness, and 
 happiness ! needing numberless suggestions, ex- 
 planations, admonitions, brief reasonings, and a 
 training to attend to the lessons of written in- 
 struction. But nothing of all this from the 
 parent. Their case was as hopeless for receiving 
 these necessaries of mental life, as the condition, 
 for physical nutriment, of infants attempting to 
 draw it, (we have heard of so affecting and 
 mournful a fact,) from the breast of a dead 
 parent. These unhappy heads of famihes 
 
oVpopular ignorance. 179 
 
 possessed no resources for engaging youthful at- 
 tention by mingled instruction and amusement ; 
 no descriptions of the most wonderful objects, or 
 narratives of the most memorable events, to set, 
 for superior attraction, against the idle stories of 
 the neighbourhood ; no assemblage of admirable 
 examples, from the sacred or other records of 
 human character, to give a beautiful real form 
 to virtue and religion, and promote an aversion 
 to base companionship. 
 
 Requirement and prohibition must be a part 
 of the domestic economy habitually in operation 
 of course ; and in such families we have seen the 
 government exercised, or attempted to be exer- 
 cised, in the roughest, barest shape of will and 
 menace, with no aptitude or means of imparting 
 to injunction and censure a convincing and per- 
 suasive quality. Not that the seniors should allow 
 their government to be placed on such a ground, 
 that, in every thing they enforce or forbid, they 
 may be liable to have their reasons demanded by 
 the children, as an understood condition of their 
 compliance. Far from it ; they will sometimes 
 have to require a prescribed conduct for reasons 
 not inteUigible, or which it may not be discreet to 
 explain, to those who are to obey. But their autho- 
 rity becomes odious, and as a moral force worse 
 than inefficient, when the natural shrewdness of 
 the children can descry that they really have no 
 reasons better than an obstinate or capricious 
 will ; and infallibly makes the inference, that 
 
 N 2 
 
180 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 there is no obligation to submit, but that neces- 
 sity which dependence imposes. But this must 
 often be the unfortunate condition of such 
 famihes. 
 
 Now imagine a week, month, or year, of 
 the intercourse in such a domestic society, the 
 course of talk, the mutual manners, and the 
 progress of mind and character ; where there 
 is a sense of drudgery approaching to that of 
 slavery, in the unrelenting necessity of labour ; 
 where there is none of the interest of imparting 
 knowledge or receiving it, or of reciprocating 
 knowledge that has been imparted and received ; 
 w^here there is not an acre, if we might express 
 it so, of intellectual space around them, clear of 
 the thick universal fog of ignorance ; where, 
 especially, the luminaries of the spiritual heaven, 
 the attributes of the Almighty, the grand phe- 
 nomenon of redeeming mediation, the solemn 
 realities of a future state and another world, are 
 totally obscured in that shade ; where the con- 
 science and the discriminations of duty are dull 
 and indistinct, from the youngest to the oldest ; 
 where there is no genuine respect on the one 
 side, nor affection unmixed with vulgar petu- 
 lance and harshness, expressed perhaps in lan- 
 guage of imprecation, on the other ; where a 
 mutual coarseness of manners and words has 
 the eJBfect, without their being aware of it as a 
 cause, of debasing their worth in one another's 
 esteem, all round ; and where, notwithstanding 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 181" 
 
 all, they absolutely must pass a great deal of 
 time together, to converse, to display their dis- 
 positions toward one another, and exemplify the 
 poverty of the mere primary relations of life, as 
 divested of the accessories which give them 
 dignity, endearment, and conduciveness to the 
 highest advantage of existence. 
 
 Home hajg but little to please the young mem- 
 bers of such a family, and a great deal to make 
 them eager to escape out of the house ; which 
 is also a welcome riddance to the elder persons, 
 when it is not in neglect or refusal to perform 
 allotted tasks. So little is the feeling of a 
 peaceful cordiality created among them by their 
 seeing one another all within the habitation, that, 
 not unfrequently, the passer-by may learn the 
 fact of their collective number being there, from 
 the sound of a low strife of mingled voices, 
 some of them betraying youth replying in anger 
 or contempt to maturity or age. It is wretched 
 to see how early this liberty is boldly taken. 
 As the children perceive nothing in the minds of 
 their parents that should awe them into defer- 
 ence, the most important difference left between 
 them is that of physical strength. The children, 
 if of hardy disposition, to which they are perhaps 
 trained in battles with their juvenile rivals, soon 
 show a certain degree of daring against this 
 superior strength. And as the difference lessens, 
 and by the time it has nearly ceased, what is so 
 natural as that they should assume equality, in 
 
182 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 manners and in following their own will ? But 
 equality assumed where there should be sub- 
 ordination, inevitably involves contempt toward 
 the party in defiance of whom it is asserted. 
 
 The relative condition of such parents as they 
 sink in old age, is most deplorable. And all 
 that has preceded, leads, by a natural course, to 
 that consequence which we have sometimes 
 beheld, with feelings emphatically gloomy, — the 
 almost perfect indifference with which the de- 
 scendants, and a few other near relations, of a 
 poor old man of this class, could consign him to 
 the grave. A human being was gone out of the 
 world, a being they had been with or near all 
 their lives, some of them sustained in their 
 childhood by his labours, and yet perhaps not 
 one heart, at any moment, felt the sentiment — 
 
 I have lost . They never could regard him 
 
 with respect, and their miserable education had 
 not taught them humanity enough to regard 
 him in his declining days as an object of pity. 
 Some decency of attention was perhaps shown 
 him, or perhaps not, in his last hours. His 
 being now a dead, instead of a living man, was 
 a burden taken off; and the insensibility and 
 levity, somewhat disturbed and repressed at the 
 sight of his expiring struggle, and of his being 
 lowered into the grave, recovered, by the day 
 after his interment, if not on the very same 
 evening, their accustomed tone, never more to 
 be interrupted by the effect of any remembrance 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCK. 183 
 
 of him. Such a closing scene one day to be 
 repeated is foreshown to us, when we look at an 
 ignorant and thoughtless father surrounded by 
 his untaught children. In the silence of thought 
 we thus accost him, — The event which will take 
 you finally from among them, perhaps after forty 
 or fifty years of intercourse with them, will leave 
 no more impression on their affections, than the 
 cutting down of a decayed old tree in the neigh- 
 bourhood of your habitation. 
 
 There are instances, of rare occurrence, when 
 such a man becomes, late in life, far too late for 
 his family to have the benefit of the change, ^ 
 a subject of the only influence which could 
 awake him to earnest thoughtfulness and the 
 full sensibility of conscience. When the sun 
 thus breaks out toward the close of his gloomy 
 day, and when, in the energy of this new life, 
 he puts forth the best efforts of his untaught 
 spirit for a little divine knowledge, to be a lamp 
 to him in entering ere long the shades of death, 
 with what bitter regrets he looks back to the 
 period when a number of human beings, some 
 perhaps still with him, some now scattered from 
 him and here and there pursuing their separate 
 courses in careless ignorance, were growing up 
 under his roof, within his charge, but in utter 
 estrangement from all discipline adapted to 
 ensure a happier sequel. His distressing reflec- 
 tion is often representing to him what they might 
 now have been if they had grown up under such 
 
184 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 discipline. And gladly would he lay down his 
 life to redeem for them but some inferior share 
 of what the season for imparting to them is gone 
 for ever. 
 
 Another thing is to be added, to this repre- 
 sentation of the evils attendant on an unculti- 
 vated state of the people, namely — that this 
 mental rudeness puts them decidedly out of hene- 
 Jicial communication with the superior and culti- 
 vated classes. 
 
 We are assuming (with permission) that a 
 national community should be constituted for 
 . the good of all its parts, not to be obtained by 
 them as detached independent portions, but as 
 adjusted and compacted into one social body; 
 an economy in which all the parts shall feel 
 they have the benefit of an amicable combina- 
 tion ; in other words, that they are the better 
 for one another. But it can be no such con- 
 stitution when the most palpable relations be- 
 tween the two main divisions of society consist 
 of such direct opposites as refinement and bar- 
 barism, dignity and gross debasement, intelligence 
 and ignorance ; which are the distinctions as- 
 serted by the higher classes to put a vast distance 
 between them and the lower. If so little of the 
 correct understanding, the information, the 
 liberalized feeling, and the propriety of deport- 
 ment, which we are to ascribe to the higher and 
 cultivated portion, goes downward into the lower, 
 it should seem impossible but there must be 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 185 
 
 more of repulsion than of amicable disposition 
 and communication between them. We may sus- 
 pect, perhaps, that those more privileged classes 
 are not generally desirous that the interval w^ere 
 much less v^ide, provided that without culti- 
 vation of the lower orders the nuisance of their 
 annoying and formidable temper could be abated. 
 But however that may be, it is exceedingly 
 desirable, for the good of both, that the upper 
 and inferior orders should be on terms of com- 
 munication and mutual good will, and therefore 
 that there should be a diminution of that rude- 
 ness of mind and habits which must contribute 
 to keep them ahenated and hostile. 
 
 If it were asked what communication, at all 
 of a nature to be described by epithets of social 
 and friendly import, we can be supposing by 
 possibility to subsist between classes so different 
 and distant, we may exemplify it by such an 
 instance as we have now and then the pleasure 
 of seeing. Each reader also, of any moderate 
 compass of observation, may probably recollect 
 an example, in the case of some man in humble 
 station, but who has had, (for his condition,) a 
 good education ; having been well instructed in 
 his youth in the elements of useful knowledge ; 
 having had good principles diligently inculcated 
 upon him ; having subsequently instructed him- 
 self, to the best of his very confined means and 
 opportunity, through a habit of reading ; and in 
 his manners unaffectedly observant of all the 
 
18d ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 decorums of a respectable human being. It has 
 been seen, that such a man has not found in his 
 superiors in station and attainment any dispo- 
 sition to shun him ; and has not felt in himself 
 or his situation any reason why he should seek 
 to shun them. He would occasionally fall into 
 conversation with the wealthy and accomplished 
 proprietor, or the professional man of learning, 
 in the neighbourhood. His intelligent manner 
 of attending to what they said, his perfect under- 
 standing of the language naturally used by 
 cultivated persons, the considerateness and 
 pertinence of his replies, and the modest defer- 
 ence, combined with an honest freedom in 
 making his observations on the matters brought 
 in question, pleased those persons of superior 
 rank, and induced various friendly and useful 
 attentions, on their part, to him and his family. 
 He and his family thus experienced a direct 
 benefit of superior sense, civility, and good 
 principle, in a humble condition ; and were put 
 under a new responsibility to preserve a charac- 
 ter for those distinctions. — Now think of the 
 incalculable advantage to society, if any thing 
 approaching to this were the general state of 
 social relation between the lower and the higher 
 orders. 
 
 On the contrary, there is no medium of com- 
 placent communication between the classes of 
 higher condition and endowment, and an igno- 
 rant coarse populace. Except on occasion of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 18? 
 
 giving orders or magisterial rebukes, the gentle- 
 man will never think of such a thing as converse 
 with the clowns in his vicinity. They, on their 
 part, are desirous to avoid him ; excepting 
 when any of them may have a purpose to gain, 
 by arresting his attention, with an ungainly 
 cringe ; or when some of those who have no 
 sort of present dependence on him, are disposed 
 to cross his way with a look and strut of rude- 
 ness, to show how little they care for him. 
 The serviHty, and the impudence, almost equally 
 repress in him all friendly disposition toward a 
 voluntary intercourse with the class. There 
 is thus as complete a dissociation between the 
 two orders, as mutual dislike, added to every 
 imaginable dissimilarity, can create. And this 
 broad ungracious separation intercepts all modi- 
 fying influence that might otherwise have passed, 
 from the intelligence and refinement of the one, 
 upon the barbarism of the other. 
 
 But there is in human nature a pertinacious 
 disposition to work disadvantages, in one way 
 or other, into privileges. The people, in being 
 thus consigned to a low and ahen ground, in 
 relation to the cultivated part of society, are 
 put in possession, as it were, of a territory of 
 their own ; where they can give their dispo- 
 sition freer play, and act out their characters in 
 their own manner ; exempt equally from the 
 voluntary and the involuntary influence of the 
 cultivated superiors ; that is to say, neither 
 
18S ON POPULAll IGNORANCE. 
 
 insensibly modified by the attraction of what is 
 the most laudable in them as a pattern, nor 
 swayed through policy to a studied accommo- 
 dation to their understood opinion and will. 
 This is a great emancipation enjoyed by the 
 inferiors. And however injurious it may be, it 
 is one of which they will not fail to take the full 
 license. For in all things and situations, it is 
 one of the first objects with human beings, 
 to verify experimentally the presumed extent 
 of their liberty and privilege. In this dissoci- 
 ation, the people are rid of the many salutary 
 restraints and incitements which they w^ould 
 have been made to feel, if on terms of friendly 
 recognition with the respectable part of the 
 community; they have neither honour nor 
 disgrace, from that quarter, to take into their 
 account ; and this contributes to extinguish all 
 sense and care of respectability of character, — 
 a care to which there will be no motive in 
 any consideration of what they may, as among 
 themselves, think of one another ; for, with the 
 low estimate which they mutually and justly 
 entertain, there is a conventional feeling among 
 them that, for the ease and privilege of them 
 all, they are systematically to set aside all high 
 notions and nice responsibilities of character 
 and conduct. 
 
 The people are thus, by their ignorance and 
 what inseparably attends it, far removed and 
 estranged from the more cultivated part of their 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 189 
 
 fellow countrymen, and consequently from every 
 beneficial influence under which a state of 
 friendly contiguity, if we may so express it, 
 would have placed them. Let us now see what, 
 in this abandonment to themselves, are their 
 growing dispositions toward the superior orders 
 and the existing arrangements of the commu- 
 nity ; dispositions which are promoted by causes 
 more definite than this estrangement considered 
 merely as the negation of benevolent intercourse, 
 but to which it mightily contributes. 
 
 Times may have been when the great mass, 
 while placed in such decided separation from 
 the upper orders, combined such a quietude 
 with their ignorance, that they had little other 
 than submissive feelings toward these superiors, 
 whose property, almost, for all service and ob- 
 sequiousness, they were accustomed to consider 
 themselves ; when no question would occur to 
 them why there should be so vast a difference 
 of condition between beings of the same race ; 
 when no other proof was required of the right 
 appointment of their lot, however humble it 
 might be, than their being, and their forefathers 
 having been, actually in it ; and when they did 
 not presume, even in thought, to make any in- 
 ferences from the fact of the immense dispro- 
 portion of numbers and consequent physical 
 strength between them and their superiors.* 
 
 * Here, however, it should be observed that in the former 
 age, when there was far less of jealous invidious feeling 
 
190 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 But the times of this perfect, unquestioning, 
 unmurmuring succumbency under the actual 
 allotment, have passed away ; except in such 
 regions as the Russian empire, where they have 
 yet long to continue. In other principal states 
 of Europe, and especially in our own, the igno- 
 rance of the people has nowhere prevented 
 them from acquiring a sense of their strength 
 and importance ; with a certain ill conceived, but 
 stimulant notion, of some change which they think 
 ought to take place in their condition. How, 
 indeed, should it have been possible for them to 
 remain unaware of this strength and importance, 
 while the whole civilized world was shaken with 
 a practical and tremendous controversy between 
 the two grand opposed orders of society, con- 
 cerning their respective rights ; or that they 
 should not have taken a strong, and, from the 
 rudeness of their mental condition, a fierce inte- 
 rest, in the principle and progress of the strife ? 
 And how should they have failed to know that, 
 during this controversy, innumerable persons 
 raised from the lower rank by talent and 
 spirit, had left no place on earth except in 
 courts (and hardly even there) for the dotage 
 of fancying some innate difference between the 
 
 between the upper and lower classes than has latterly intervened, 
 there was a more amicable manner of intercommunication. 
 The settled and perfectly recognised state of subordination 
 precluded, on the one side, all apprehension of encroachment, 
 and on the other, the disposition to it. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 191 
 
 classes distinguished in the artificial order of 
 society ? 
 
 The effect of all this is gone deep into the 
 minds of great numbers who are not excited, in 
 consequence, to any worthy exertion for raising 
 themselves, individually, from their degraded 
 condition, by the earnest application and im- 
 provement of their means and faculties. The 
 feeling of many of them seems to be, that they 
 must and will sullenly abide by the ill-starred 
 fate of their order, till some great comprehensive 
 alteration, in their favour, shall absolve them 
 from that bond of hostile sentiment, in which 
 they make common cause against the superior 
 classes ; and shall create a state of things in 
 which it shall be worth while for the individual 
 to make an effort to raise himself. We can at 
 best, (they seem to say,) barely maintain, with 
 the utmost difficulty, a miserable life ; and you 
 talk to us of cultivation, of discipline, of moral 
 respectability, of efforts to come out from our 
 degraded rank ! No, we shall even stay where 
 we are, till it is seen how the question is to be 
 settled between the people of our sort, and those 
 who will have it that they are of a far worthier 
 kind. There may then, perhaps, be some chance 
 for such as we ; and if not, the less we are dis- 
 turbed about improvement, knowledge, and all 
 those things, the better, while we are bearing 
 the heavy load a few years, to die like those 
 before us. 
 
192 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 We said they are banded in a hostile senti- 
 ment. It is true, that among such a degraded 
 populace there is very little kindness, or care for 
 one another's interests. They all know too well 
 what they all are not, to feel mutual esteem or 
 benevolence. But it is infinitely easier for any 
 set of human beings to maintain a community of 
 feeling in hostility to something else, than in 
 benevolence toward one another ; for here no 
 sacrifice is required of any one's self-interest. 
 And it is certain, that the subordinate portions 
 of society, in this and several other nations, have 
 come to regard the occupants of the tracts of 
 fertihty and sunshine, the possessors of opulence, 
 splendour, and luxury, with a deep, settled, sys- 
 tematic aversion ; with a disposition to contem- 
 plate in any other light than that of a calamity 
 an extensive downfall of the favourites of for- 
 tune, when a brooding imagination figures such 
 a thing as possible ; and with but very slight 
 monitions from conscience of the iniquity of the 
 most tumultuary accomplishment of such a ca- 
 tastrophe. In a w^ord, so far from considering 
 their own welfare as identified with the stability 
 of the existing social order, they consider it as 
 something that would spring from the ruin of 
 that order. The greater number of them have 
 lost that veneration by habit, partaking of the 
 nature of a superstition, which had been pro- 
 tracted downward, though progressively attenu- 
 ated with the lapse of time, from the feudal ages 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 193 
 
 into the last century. They have quite lost, too, 
 in this disastrous age, that sense of competence 
 and possible wellbeing, which might have har- 
 monized their feelings with a social economy 
 that would have allowed them the enjoyment of 
 such a state, even as the purchase of great in- 
 dustry and care. Whatever the actual economy 
 may have of wisdom in its institutions, and of 
 splendour, and fulness of all good things, in 
 some parts of its apportionment, they feel that 
 what is allotted to most of them in its arrange- 
 ments is pressing hardship, gaUing, unremitting 
 poverty, growing still more severe and hopeless 
 with the progress of time, and of what they hear 
 trumpeted as national glory, nay, even '' national 
 prosperity and happiness unrivalled." This bitter 
 experience, which inevitably becomes associated 
 in their thoughts with that frame of society 
 under which they suffer it, will naturally have a 
 far stronger effect on their opinion of that system 
 than all that had ever rendered them acquiescent 
 or reverential toward it. That it has no relief, 
 nor promise of relief, for their distress, is a cir- 
 cumstance preponderating in the estimate against 
 all that can be said of its ancient establishment, 
 its theoretical excellences, or the blessings in 
 which it might once have abounded, or may be 
 pretended still to abound. What were become 
 of the most essential laws of human feehng, if 
 such experience could leave those who are 
 undergoing its discipline still faithfully attached 
 
\ 
 
 194 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 to the social order on the strength of its con- 
 secration by time, and of the former settled 
 opinions in its favour, — however tenacious the 
 impressions so wrought into habit are admitted 
 to be? And the minds of the people thus 
 thrown loose from the former ties, are not 
 checked and recovered by any substitutional 
 ones formed while those were decaying. They 
 are not retained in a temper of patient endurance 
 and adherence, by the bond of principles which 
 a sedulous and deep instruction alone could 
 have enforced on them. The growth of sound 
 judgment under such instruction, might have 
 made them capable of understanding how a 
 proportion of the evil may have been inevitable, 
 from uncontrollable causes ; of perceiving that 
 it could not fail to be aggravated by a disregard 
 of prudence in the proceedings in early life 
 among their own class, and that so far it were 
 unjust to impute it to their superiors or to the 
 order of society ; of admitting that national 
 calamities are visitations of divine judgrhent, of 
 which they were to reflect whether they had 
 not deserved a heavy share ; of feeling it to be 
 therefore no impertinent or fanatical admo- 
 nition that should exhort them to repentance 
 and reformation, as an expedient for the amend- 
 ment of even their temporal condition ; and of 
 clearly comprehending that, at all events, ran- 
 cour, violence, and disorder, cannot be the way 
 to alleviate any of the evils, but to aggravate 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 195 
 
 them all. But, we repeat it, there are millions 
 in this land, and if we include the neighbouring 
 island politically united to it, very many millions, 
 who have received no instruction adequate, in the 
 smallest degree, to counteract the natural effect 
 of the distresses of their condition ; or to create a 
 class of moral restraints and mitigations in pre 
 vention of a total hostility of feeling against the 
 established order, after the ancient attachments 
 to it have been worn out by the innovations of 
 opinion, and the pressure of continued suffering. 
 Thus uninstructed to apprehend the consi- 
 derations adapted to impose a moral restraint, 
 thus unmodified by principles of mitigation, 
 there is a large proportion of human strength 
 and feehng not in vital combination with the 
 social system, but aloof from it, looking at it 
 with " gloomy and malign regard," in a state 
 progressive toward a fitness to be impelled 
 against it with a dreadful shock, under the 
 actuating energy of whatever daring powerful 
 spirits might arise, intent on its demolition, and 
 favoured by opportune conjunctures of circum- 
 stances. There have not been wanting examples 
 to show, with what fearful effect this hostility 
 may come into action, in the crisis of the fate 
 of a nation's ancient system ; where this alien- 
 ated portion of its own people, rushing in, 
 have revenged upon it the neglect of their 
 tuition ; that neglect which had abandoned them 
 to so utter a " lack of knowledge," that they 
 
 o2 
 
 J 
 
196 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 really understood no better than to expect their 
 ownv^plid advantage in general havoc and dis- 
 order. "But how bereft of sense the State too 
 must' be, that would thus let a multitude of its 
 people grow up in a condition of mind to believe, 
 that the sovereign expedient for their welfare is 
 to be found in spoliation and destruction ! It 
 might easily have comprehended, what it was 
 reasonable to expect from the matured dispo- 
 sitions and strength of such of its children as it 
 abandoned to be nursed by the wolf. 
 
 While this principle of ruin was working on 
 by a steady and natural process, this supposed 
 infatuated State was, it is extremely possible, 
 directing its chief care to maintain the splendour 
 of a court, or to extort the means for prosecut- 
 ing some object of vain and wicked ambition, 
 some project of conquest and military glory. 
 And probably nothing could have appeared to 
 many of its privileged persons more idle and 
 ridiculous, or to others of them more offensive 
 and ill-intentioned, than a remonstrance founded 
 on a warning of such a consequence. The des- 
 pisers would have been incomparably the greater 
 number ; and, " Go (they would have said) with 
 your mock-tragical fortune-tening,to whoever can 
 beheve, too, that one day or other the quadrupeds 
 of our stalls and meadows may be suddenly in- 
 spirited by some supernatural possession to turn 
 their strength on us in a mass, or those of our 
 kennels to imitate the dogs of Actaeon." 
 
SECTION IV. 
 
 Objection, that a material increase of knowledge and intelligence among 
 the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented 
 with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward 
 their superiors ; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the 
 wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and 
 innovators. — Observations in answer. — Special and striking absurdity 
 of this objection in one important particular. — Evidence from matter 
 of fact that the improvement of the popular understanding has not the 
 tendency alleged. — The special regard meant to be had to religious 
 instruction in the education desired for the lower classes, a security 
 against their increased knowledge being perverted into an excitement 
 to insubordination and disorder. — Absurdity of the notion that an 
 improved education of the common people ought to consist of instruc- 
 tion specifically and almost solely religious. — The diminutive quantity 
 of religious as well as other knowledge, to which the people would be 
 limited by some zealous advocates of order and subordination, utterly 
 inadequate to secure those objects. — But, question what is to be under- 
 stood by order and subordination. — Increased knowledge and sense in 
 the people certainly not favourable to a credulous confidence and a 
 passive unconditional submission, on their part, toward the presiding 
 classes in the community. — Advantage, to a wise and upright govern- 
 ment, of having intelligent subjects. — Great effect which a general 
 improvement among the people would necessarily have on the manner 
 of their being governed. — The people arrived, in this age, at a state 
 which renders it impracticable to preserve national tranquillity without 
 improving their minds and making some concessions to their claims.-— 
 Folly and probable calamity of an obstinate resolution to maintain 
 subordination in the nations of Europe in the arbitrary and despotic 
 manner of former times. — Facility and certain success of a better 
 system. 
 
 There may be persons ready to make a question 
 here, whether it be so certain that giving the 
 people of the lower order more knowledge, and 
 sharpening their faculties, will really tend to 
 
198 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the preservation of good order. Would not such 
 improvement elate them, to a most extravagant 
 estimate of their own worth and importance ; 
 and therefore result in insufferable arrogance, 
 both in the individuals and the class ? Would 
 they not, on the strength of it, be continually 
 assuming to sit in judgment on the proceedings 
 and claims of their betters, even in the most 
 lofty stations ; and demanding their own pre- 
 tended rights, with a troublesome and turbulent 
 pertinacity ? Would they not, since their im- 
 provement cannot, from their condition in life, 
 be large and deep, be in just such a half taught 
 state, as would make them exactly fit to be 
 wrought upon by all sorts of crafty schemers, 
 fierce declaimers, empirics, and innovators ? Is 
 it not, in short, too probable that, since an in- 
 crease of mental power is available to bad uses 
 as well as good, the results would greatly pre- 
 ponderate on the side of evil ? 
 
 It would be curious to observe how objections 
 so plausible, so decisive in the esteem of those 
 who advance them, would sound if expressed in 
 other terms. Let them be put in the form of 
 such sentences and propositions as the follow- 
 ing : — Though understanding is to be men's 
 guide to right conduct, the less of it they pos- 
 sess the more safe are we against their going, 
 wrong. The duty of a human being has many 
 branches ; there are connected with all of them 
 various general and special considerations, to 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 199 
 
 induce and regulate the performance ; it must be 
 well for these to be defined with all possible clear- 
 ness ; and it is also well for the great majority 
 of men to be utterly incapable of apprehending 
 them with any such definiteness. It is desirable 
 that the rule, or set of rules, by which the 
 demeanour of the lower orders toward those 
 above them is to be directed, should appear to 
 them reasonable as well as distinctly defined ; 
 but let us take the greatest care that their 
 reason shall be in no state of fitness to perceive 
 this rectitude of the rules. It would be a noble 
 thing to have a competent understanding of all 
 that belongs to. human interest and duty; and 
 therefore the next best thing is to be retained 
 very nearly in ignorance of all. It would be 
 a vast advantage to proceed a hundred degrees 
 on the scale of knowledge; but the advantage 
 is no where in the progress ; each of the de- 
 grees is in itself worth nothing ; nay, less than 
 nothing ; for unless a man could attain all, he 
 had better stop at two or one, than advance to 
 four, six, or ten. Truths support one another ; 
 by the conjunction of several each is kept the 
 clearer in the understanding, the more efificient 
 for its proper use, and the more adequate to 
 resist the pressure of the surrounding ignorance 
 and delusion ; therefore let there be the greatest 
 caution that we do not give three truths in a 
 man's understanding the aid of a fourth, or 
 four the aid of a fifth ; let the garrison be so 
 
200 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 diminutive that its successful resistance to the 
 
 siege must be a miracle. The reader will be 
 
 in little danger of excess in shaping into as many 
 forms of absurdity as he pleases a notion which 
 goes to the depreciation of the desire and use of 
 truth, of all that has been venerated as wisdom, 
 of the divine revelation of knowledge, and of 
 our rational nature itself. 
 
 If it be a rational nature that the lower ranks 
 possess as well as the superior, one should have 
 imagined it must be in the highest degree 
 important that they, as well as their superiors, 
 should habitually make their duty and conduct 
 a matter of thought y of intelligent consideration, 
 instead of going through it mechanically, or 
 with little more than a brute accommodation 
 of what they do to a customary and imposed 
 manner of doing it ; but this thoughtful way of 
 acting will never prevail among them, while 
 they are unexercised in that thinking which 
 (generally speaking) men will never acquire but 
 in the exercise of gaining knowledge. It were, 
 again, better, one would think, that they should 
 be capable of seeing some reason and use in 
 gradations and unequal distributions in the com- 
 munity, than be left to regard it as all a matter 
 of capricious or iniquitous fortune, to their 
 allotment under which there is no reason for 
 submission but a bare necessity. The improve- 
 ment of understanding by which we are wishing 
 to raise them in this humble allotment, without 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 201 
 
 carrying them from the ground where it is 
 placed, will explain to them the best compen- 
 sations of their condition, will show them it is 
 no essential degradation, and point them to the 
 true respectability which may be attained in it. 
 And even if they should be a little too much 
 elated with the supposed attainments, (while the 
 flattering possession is yet new, and far from 
 general in their class,) what taste would it be 
 in their superiors not to deem this itself a far 
 better thing than the contented, or more pro- 
 bably insolent and malignant, grossness of a 
 stupid vulgarity ? — as some little excess of self- 
 complacency in appearing in a handsome dress 
 is accounted much less disgusting than a care- 
 less self-exposure in filth and rags. 
 
 As to their being rendered liable by more 
 knowledge to be caught by declaimers, pro- 
 jectors, and agitators, we may confidently ask, 
 whether it be the natural effect of more know- 
 ledge and understanding to be less suspicious 
 of cajoling professions, less discerning of what is 
 practicable and impracticable, and more credu- 
 lous to extravagant doctrines, and wild theories 
 and schemes. Is it the well instructed and 
 intelhgent poor man that believes the dema- 
 gogue who may assert or insinuate that, if 
 things were ordered right, all men might live 
 in the greatest plenty? Or if we advert to 
 those of the lower order whom a diminutive free- 
 hold or other qualification may entitle to vote 
 
*202 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 for a member of parliament, is it the well in- 
 structed and intelligent man among them that 
 is duped by the candidate's professions of kind 
 solicitude for him and his family, accompanied 
 with smiling equivocal hints that it may be of 
 more advantage than he is aware for a man who 
 has sons to provide for to have a friend who 
 has access and power in a certain high quarter ? 
 Nor is it among the best instructed and most 
 thinking part of the subordinate class, that we 
 shall find persons capable of believing that a 
 community might, if those who govern it so 
 pleased, be rich and prosperous without a gene- 
 ral industry in ordinary employments. 
 
 If, again, it is apprehended that a great in- 
 crease of intelligence among the people would 
 destroy their deference and respectful deport- 
 ment toward their superiors, the ground of this 
 apprehension should be honestly assigned. If 
 the claim to this respect be definable, and ca- 
 pable of being enforced upon good reasons, it is 
 obvious that improved sense in the people will 
 better appreciate them. Especially, if the claim 
 is to owe any part of its validity to higher mental 
 qualifications in the claimants, it will so far be 
 incomparably better understood, and if it be 
 valid, far more respected than it is now. By 
 having a measure of knowledge, and of the 
 power and practice of thinking, the people would 
 be enabled to form some notion of what it must 
 be, and what it is worth, to have a vast deal 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 203 
 
 more of these endowments. They would ob- 
 serve and understand the indications of this 
 ampler possession in the minds of those above 
 them, and so would be aware of the great dis- 
 parity between themselves and these superiors. 
 And since they would value themselves on their 
 comparatively small share of these mental ad- 
 vantages, (for this is the very point of the 
 objection against their attaining them,) they 
 would be compelled to estimate by the same 
 scale the persons dignified by so far surpass- 
 ing a share of this admired wealth. Whereas 
 an ignorant populace can understand nothing 
 at all about the matter ; they have no guess at 
 the great disparity, nor impression of its impor- 
 tance; so that with them the cultivated supe- 
 riors quite lose the weight of this grand difference, 
 and can obtain none of the respect which they 
 may deserve on account of it. The objection 
 against enlightening the lower classes appears 
 so remarkably absurd as viewed in this direction, 
 that it might tempt us to suspect a motive not 
 avowed. It is just the sort of caveat to be 
 uttered by persons aware that themselves, or 
 many of their class, might happen to betray to 
 the sharpened inspection of a more intelligent 
 people, that a higher ground in the allotments 
 of fortune is no pledge for a superior rank of 
 mind. It were strange, very strange indeed, if 
 persons combining with superior station a great 
 mental superiority, should be content, while 
 
204 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 claiming the deference of the subordinate part 
 of the community around them, that this high 
 distinction should go for nothing in that claim, 
 and that the required respect should be paid 
 only in reverence of the number of their acres, 
 the size of their houses, the elegance of their 
 domestic arrangements, and perhaps some 
 official capacity, in which many a notorious 
 blockhead has strutted and blustered. 
 
 We think such considerations as the above, 
 opposed to the objection that any very material 
 cultivation of the minds of the common people 
 v^ould destroy their industry in ordinary employ- 
 ments, their contentment with their station, and 
 their respectful demeanour to their superiors, 
 and would render them arrogant, disorderly, 
 factious, liable to be caught by wild notions, 
 misled by declaimers and impostors, and in 
 short, all the worse for being able to understand 
 their duty and interest the better, ought to go 
 far toward convicting that objection of great 
 folly, — not to apply terms of stronger impu- 
 tation. 
 
 But we need not have dwelt so long on such 
 arguments, since fortunately there is matter of 
 fact in answer to the objection. To the extent 
 of the yet very limited experiment, it is proved, 
 that giving the people more knowledge and 
 more sense does not tend to disorder and insub- 
 ordination ; does not excite them to impatience 
 and extravagant claims ; does not spoil them 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 205 
 
 for the ordinary business of life, the tasks of duty 
 and necessity ; does not make them the dupes 
 of knaves ; nor teach them that the most pro- 
 fitable use of their improved faculties is to turn 
 knaves themselves. Employers can testify, from 
 all sides, that there is a striking general differ- 
 ence between those bred up in ignorance and 
 rude vulgarity, and those who have been trained 
 through the well ordered schools for the humble 
 classes ; a difference exceedingly in favour of 
 the latter, who are found not only more apt at 
 understanding and executing, but more decorous, 
 more respectful, more attentive to orders, more 
 ready to see and acknowledge the propriety of 
 good regulations, and more disposed to a prac- 
 tical acquiescence in them ; far less inchned to 
 ebriety and low company ; and more to be 
 depended on in point of honesty. In almost 
 any part of the country, where the experiment 
 has been zealously prosecuted for a moderate 
 number of years, a long resident observer can 
 discern a modification in the character of the 
 neighbourhood ; a mitigation of the former 
 brutality of manners, a less frequency of brawls 
 and quarrels, and less tendency to draw together 
 into rude riotous assemblages. There is espe- 
 cially a marked difference on the Sabbath, on 
 which great numbers attend public worship, 
 whose forefathers used on that day to congregate 
 for boisterous sport on the common, or even 
 within the inclosure vainly consecrated round 
 
206 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the church ; and who would themselves m all 
 probabihty have followed the same course, but 
 for the tuition which has led them into a better. 
 In not a few instances, the children have carried 
 from the schools inestimable benefits home to 
 their unhappy families ; winning even their 
 depraved thoughtless parents into consideration 
 and concern about their most important interests, 
 — a precious repayment of all the long toils and 
 cares, endured to support them through the 
 period of childhood, and an example of that 
 rare class of phenomena, in which (as in the 
 instance of the Grecian Daughter) a superlative 
 beauty arises from an inversion of the order of 
 nature. 
 
 Even the frightful statements of the increase, 
 in recent years, of active juvenile depravity, 
 especially in the metropolis, include a gratifying 
 testimony in favour of education. The result of 
 special inquiries, of extensive compass, into the 
 wretched history of juvenile reprobates, has 
 fortified the promoters of schools with evidence 
 that it was not from these seminaries that such 
 noxious creatures were to go out, to exemplify 
 that the improvement of intelligence may be 
 but the greater aptitude for fraud and mischief. 
 No, it was uniformly found to have been in very 
 different places of resort, that these wretches 
 had been, almost from their infancy, accom- 
 plished for crime ; and that their training had 
 not taken or needed any assistance from an 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 207 
 
 exercise on literary rudiments, from bibles, 
 catechisms, or religious and moral poetry, or 
 from an attendance on public worship. Indeed, 
 as if Providence had designed that the substan- 
 tial utility should be accompanied with a special 
 circumstance to confound the cavillers, the chil- 
 dren and youth of the schools were found to 
 have been more generally preserved from falling 
 into the class of premature delinquents, than a 
 moral calculator, keeping in sight the quality of 
 human nature and the immediate pressure of 
 so much temptation, would have ventured to 
 anticipate, upon a moderate estimate of the 
 efficacy of instruction. 
 
 Experience equally falsifies the notion that 
 knowledge, imparted to the lower orders, beyond 
 what is necessary to the handling of their tools, 
 tends to factious turbulence ; to an impatience, 
 (from the instigation of certain wild theories,) 
 under law and regular government in society. 
 The maintainers of which notion should also 
 affirm, that the people of Scotland have been to 
 this day about the most disaffected, tumultuary, 
 revolutionary rabble in Europe ; and that the 
 Cornish miners, now so worthily distinguished 
 at once by exercised intellect and religion, are 
 incessantly on the point of insurrection, against 
 their employers or the state. And we shall be 
 just as ready to beheve them, if they also assert, 
 that, in those popular irregularities which have 
 too often disturbed, in particulqj- places, the 
 
208 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 peace of our country, the clamorous bands or 
 crowds, collected for purposes of intimidation or 
 demolition, have consisted chiefly of the better 
 instructed part of the poorer inhabitants ; — yes, 
 or that this class furnished one in fifty of the 
 numbers forming such lawless bands ; even 
 though many of these more instructed of the 
 people might be suffering, with their families, 
 the utmost extremity of want, the intense 
 • craving of hunger, which, no less than '' op- 
 pression," may '' make a wise man mad." Many 
 of these, in their desolate abodes, with tears of 
 parents and children mingled together, have 
 been committing themselves to their Father in 
 heaven, at the time that the ruder part of the 
 population have been carrying alarm, and some- 
 times mischief, through the district, and so con- 
 firming the faith, we may suppose, of sundry 
 magnates of the neighbourhood, who had vehe- 
 mently asserted, a few years before, the pernicious 
 tendency of educating the people. 
 
 It would be less than what is due to suffering 
 humanity, to leave this topic without observing, 
 that if a numerous division of the community 
 should be sinking under severe, protracted, 
 unmitigated distress, distress on which there 
 appears to them no dawn of hope from ordinary 
 cause§, it is not to be held a disparagement to 
 the value of education, if some of those who 
 have enjoyed a measure of that advantage, in 
 common with, a greater number who have not. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 209 
 
 should become feverishly agitated with imagi- 
 nations of great sudden changes in the social 
 system ! and be led to entertain suggestions of 
 irregular violent expedients for the removal of 
 insupportable evils. It must, in all reason, be 
 acknowledged the last lesson which education 
 could be expected to teach with practical effect, 
 that one part of the community should be will- 
 ing to resign themselves, as far as they can see, 
 to destruction, that the others may live in suf- 
 ficiency and tranquillity. Such heroic devote- 
 ment might not be difficult in the sublime 
 elation of Thermopylae ; but it is a very diffe- 
 rent matter in a melancholy cottage, and in the 
 midst of famishing children. 
 
 After thus referring to matter of fact, for 
 contradiction of the notion, that the mental 
 cultivation of the lower classes might render 
 them less subject to the rules of good order, 
 we have to say, in further reply, th^t we are 
 not heard insisting on the advantages of in- 
 creased knowledge, and mental invigoration, 
 among the people unconnected with the inculca- 
 tion of religion. Nor is this essential point 
 forgotten or neglected in the actual system of 
 procedure, in the institutions we are pleading 
 for. Undoubtedly, their conductors and zealous 
 friends account knowledge valuable absolutely, 
 as being the apprehension of things as they are ; 
 a prevention of delusion ; and so far a fitness 
 
210 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 for right volitions. But they consider religion 
 (besides being itself the primary and infinitely the 
 most important part of knowledge,) as a principle 
 indispensable for securing the full benefit of all 
 the rest. It is desired, and endeavoured, that the 
 understandings of these opening minds may be 
 taken possession of by just and solemn ideas of 
 their relation to the Eternal Almighty Being ; 
 that they may be taught to apprehend it as an 
 awful reality, that they are perpetually under 
 his inspection ; and as a certainty, that they 
 must at length appear before him in judgment, 
 and find, in another life, the consequences of 
 what they are in spirit and conduct here. It is 
 impressed upon them, that his will is the su- 
 preme law; that his declarations are the most 
 momentous truth known on earth ; and his 
 favour and condemnation the greatest good and 
 evil. Under an ascendency of this divine wis- 
 dom it is, that their discipline in any other 
 knowledge is designed to be conducted ; so that 
 nothing in the mode of their instruction may 
 have a tendency contrary to it, and every thing 
 be taught in a manner recognising the relation 
 with it, as far as shall consist with a natural 
 unforced way of keeping this relation in view. 
 Thus it is sought to be secured that, as the 
 pupil's mind grows stronger and multiplies its 
 resources, and he therefore has necessarily more 
 power and means for what is wrong, there may 
 be luminously presented to him, as if celestial 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 211 
 
 eyes visibly beamed upon him, the most solemn 
 ideas that can enforce what is right. 
 
 Such is the discipline meditated, for preparing 
 the subordinate classes to pursue their individual 
 welfare, and act their part as members of the 
 community. — They are to be trained in early 
 life to dihgent employment of their faculties, 
 tending to strengthen them, regulate them, and 
 give their possessors the power of effectually 
 using them. They are to be exercised to form 
 clear, correct notions, instead of crude, vague, 
 delusive ones. The subjects of these ideas will 
 be, a very considerable number of the most 
 important facts and principles ; which are to be 
 presented to their understandings with a patient 
 repetition of efforts to fix them there as know- 
 ledge that cannot be forgotten. By this mea- 
 sure of actual acquirement, and by the habit 
 formed in so acquiring, they will be qualified 
 for making further attainment in future time, 
 if disposed to improve their opportunities. 
 During this progress, and in connexion with 
 many of its exercises, their duty is to be incul- 
 cated on them in the various forms in which 
 they will have to make a choice between right 
 and wrong, in their conduct toward society. 
 There will be reiteration of lessons on justice, pru- 
 dence, inoffensiveness, love of peace, estrange- 
 ment from the counsels and leagues of vain and 
 bad men ; hatred of disorder and violence, a 
 sense of the necessity of pubUc institutions 
 
 p2 
 
212 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 to prevent these evils, and respect for them 
 while they honestly answer this end. All this 
 is to be taught, in many instances directly, in 
 others by reference for confirmation, from the 
 Holy Scriptures, from which authority will also 
 be impressed, all the while, the principles of 
 religion. And religion, while its grand concern 
 is with the state of the soul towards God and 
 eternal interests, yet takes every principle and 
 rule of morals under the sanction of its autho- 
 rity; making the primary obligation and re- 
 sponsibility be towards God, of every thing that 
 is a duty with respect to men. So that, with 
 the subjects of this education, the sense of pro- 
 priety shall be conscience, the consideration of 
 how they ought to be regulated in their conduct 
 as a part of the community, shall be the recol- 
 lection that their Master in heaven dictates the 
 laws of that conduct, and will judicially hold 
 them amenable for every part of it. 
 
 And is not a discipline thus addressed to the 
 purpose of fixing religious principles in ascen- 
 dency, as far as that diflftcult object is within the 
 power of discipline, and of infusing a salutary 
 tincture of them into whatever else is taught, 
 the right way to bring up citizens faithful to all 
 that deserves fidehty in the social compact ? — 
 But perhaps far less of sacred knowledge than 
 all this pleading assumes to be indispensable to 
 them, will answer the end. For it is but a 
 slender quantity of it that is, in effect, proposed 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 213 
 
 to be imparted to them by those who would give 
 them very Httle other knowledge. They will 
 talk of giving the people an education specifically 
 rehgious, a training in which it shall be nearly 
 as essential a matter of care that they should 
 not acquire any general knowledge, as that they 
 should acquire religious knowledge. 
 
 Now, may we presume that by knowledge, 
 or information, is meant a clear understanding 
 of a subject? If so, it is but httle religious 
 information that can be imparted while that of 
 a more general nature is withheld. The case is 
 so, partly because, in order to a clear conception 
 of the principal things in the doctrine of religion, 
 the mind wants facts, principles, associations of 
 ideas, and modes of applying its thoughts, which 
 are to be acquired from the consideration of 
 various other subjects ; and partly because, even 
 though it did not, and though it were practicable 
 to understand religious truths clearly without 
 the subsidiary ideas, and the disciplined mental 
 habit acquired in attention to other subjects, 
 it is flatly contrary to the radical disposition of 
 human nature that youthful spirits should yield 
 themselves to a bare exclusively religious disci- 
 pline. It were supposing a reversal of the 
 natural taste and tendency, to expect them to 
 apply their attention so patiently, so wilhngly, 
 so long, and with such interest, to this one 
 subject, as to be brought to a rational and 
 thoughtful state of mind through the almost sole 
 
214 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 exercise of thinking on this. By thinking on this ! 
 — which is the subject on which they are by 
 their very nature the least of all inclined to 
 think ; the subject on which it is the most diffi- 
 cult as well as the most important point in 
 education to induce them to think ; the subject 
 which^ while it is so essential to give it the 
 ascendency in the instruction of both the lower 
 classes and all others, it requires so much care 
 and address to present in an attractive light; 
 and which it is so desirable to combine with 
 other subjects naturally more engaging, in order 
 to bring it oftener by such associations into the 
 thoughts, in that secondary manner which 
 causes somewhat less of recoil. 
 
 It is curious to see what some persons can 
 believe or affect to beheve, when reduced to a 
 dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot endure 
 the idea of any considerable raising of the com- 
 mon people by mental improvement, in the 
 general sense : that were infallible ruin to us all. 
 But then on the other, if it must not be plainly 
 denied, that the said common people are of the 
 very same rational nature as the most elevated 
 divisions of the race ; and that their essential 
 worth must be in this spiritual thinking being, 
 which worth is lost to them, if that being is 
 sunk and degi*aded in gross ignorance, it follows 
 that some kind of cultivation is required. Well 
 then ; we must give them some religious know- 
 ledge, unaccompanied by such other knowledge 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 215 
 
 as would much more attractively invite them to 
 exercise their minds, and it will be practicable and 
 easy enough to engage their habitual attention 
 to that very subject, almost exclusively, to 
 which the natural taste of the species is pecu- 
 liarly averse. 
 
 In exposing the absurdity of any scheme of 
 education for the inferior classes, which should 
 propose to make them intelhgent about religion 
 and intelligent about nothing else except their 
 ordinary employments, we do not forget the 
 instances now and then met with of pious poor 
 men who, while very uncultivated in the general 
 sense, evince a remarkable clearness of concep- 
 tion on religious topics, and in the application of 
 these topics to their duties as men and citizens. 
 But " remarkable " we involuntary call these 
 phenomena whenever adverting to them. We 
 naturally use some expression importing a de- 
 gree of wonder at such a fact. We consider it 
 a striking illustration of the power of religion 
 itself, and not of the power of religious instruc- 
 tion. The extreme force with which the vital 
 spirit has seized and actuated his faculties, has 
 in a measure remedied the incapacity he had 
 otherwise been under of forming clear ideas of 
 the subject. Even, however, while acknowledg- 
 ing and admiring this effect of a special influence 
 from heaven, we still find ourselves involuntarily 
 surmising, in such an instance, that the man 
 must also have been superior in natural capacity 
 
216 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 to the generality of ignorant persons ; so much 
 out of the common course of things we account 
 it for a man who knows so few things to know 
 this one thing so well. We account it so from 
 the settled conviction received through experi- 
 ence, that it is very unlikely a man ignorant of 
 almost all other things should well understand 
 one subject, of a nature quite foreign to that of 
 his ordinary occupations. 
 
 It is superfluous to observe, that such in- 
 stances of a very considerable comprehension of 
 religious truth, obtained in spite of what na- 
 turally makes so much against its being attain- 
 able, cannot affect the calculation when we are 
 devising schemes which can only work according 
 to natural laws and with ordinary powers. They 
 who devise and apply them will rejoice at these 
 evidences that there is an Agent who can open 
 men's minds to the light of religion independently 
 and in the absence of other intellectual advan- 
 tages. But the question being how to bring the 
 people, by the ordinary means of education, to a 
 competent knowledge of religious truth, we 
 have to consider what way of attempting to 
 impart that knowledge may be the best fitted, 
 at once to obviate their natural indisposition to 
 the subject, and to provide that when it does 
 obtain a place in their understanding, it shall 
 not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant 
 there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. 
 And if, in attentively studying this, there be any 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 217 
 
 who come to ascertain, that the right expedient 
 is a bare inculcation of rehgious instruction, 
 disconnected, on system, from the illustrative 
 aid of other knowledge, divested of the modifi- 
 cation and attraction of associated ideas derived 
 from subjects less uncongenial with the natural 
 feelings, — they really may take the satisfaction 
 of having ascertained one thing more, which 
 may nearly exempt them from the toil of applying 
 even that expedient : they have discovered that 
 human nature has become at last so mightily 
 changed, that it may be left to work itself right 
 very soon, as to the affair of religion, without 
 any further trouble of theirs. 
 
 It is, let it be remembered, as a security 
 against the ruin pretended to be dreaded to the 
 due order and subordination in society, from 
 such an innovation as that of knowledge pos- 
 sessed by the people, that we are at present 
 laying such stress on religious instruction as 
 a most essential point in any scheme for their 
 better education. And in this character of a 
 preserver of good order, it has been insisted 
 on by persons who avowed their contempt or 
 abhorrence of every idea of an education in a 
 more enlarged sense. We have heard it so 
 insisted on by members of the most learned in- 
 stitutions, at the same moment that they ex- 
 pressed more than a doubt of the prudence of 
 enabling the common people to read, literalfy 
 to read, the Bible. But assuredly the good 
 
218 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 order of a populace left in the stupid ignorance 
 to which some of these good friends of theirs 
 would have doomed them, cannot be preserved 
 by any such feeble infusion of religious know- 
 ledge as these same good friends would instil 
 into their mental grossness. As long as they 
 are in this condition, there must be some far 
 stronger power acting on them to preserve that 
 good order. And if such a cause actually has 
 maintained it hitherto, and can maintain it still, 
 with this wretched scantling of religious know- 
 ledge in the majority of the mass, a great deal 
 of hypocritical canting, about some sense of 
 religion in the inferior classes being indispensable 
 for the safety of the state, might have been 
 spared. 
 
 But all this while, we are forgetting to inquire 
 how much is to be understood as included in 
 that good order, that deference and subordi- 
 nation, which the possession of more mind and 
 knowledge by the people might disturb or 
 destroy. May not the notion of it, as enter- 
 tained by some persons, be rather an image 
 of the polity of an age long past, or of that 
 which remains unaltered as if it were a part 
 of eternal nature in the dominions of the East, 
 than a model for the conformation of society 
 here in the present times ? Is it required that 
 there should be a sentiment of obsequiousness 
 in the people affecting them in a manner like 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 219 
 
 the instinct by which a lower order of animals 
 is in awe of a higher, by which the common 
 tribe of beasts would cower at the sight of 
 lions ? Or is the deference expected to be paid, 
 not upon any understanding of reciprocal ad- 
 vantage, but absolutely and unconditionally, as 
 to a claim founded in abstract or divine right ? 
 Is it to be held a criminal presumption in the 
 people, to think of examining their relations to 
 the community any further than the obligation 
 of being industrious in the employments to 
 which it assigns them, and dutiful to its higher 
 orders ? Are they to entertain no question re- 
 specting the right adjustment of their condition 
 in the arrangements of the great social body ? 
 Are they forbidden ever to admit a single doubt 
 of its being quite> a matter of course, that every 
 thing which could be done for the interests of 
 their class, consistently with the welfare of the 
 whole, is done ; or, therefore, to pretend to any 
 such right as that of representing, complaining, 
 remonstrating, or an ultimate recourse, perhaps, 
 to stronger expedients ? 
 
 A subordination founded in such principles, 
 and required to such a degree, it is true enough 
 that the communication of knowledge is not the 
 way to perpetuate. For the first use, which men 
 will infallibly make of an enlargement of their 
 faculties and ideas, will be, to take a larger view 
 of their interests ; and they may happen, as soon 
 as they do so, to think they discover that it was 
 
220 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE* 
 
 quite time ; and the longer they do so, to retain 
 still less and less of implicit faith that those 
 interests will be done justice to, without their 
 own vigilance and intervention. An educated 
 people must be very slow indeed in the appli- 
 cation of what they learn, if they do not soon 
 grow out of all belief in the necesmrtj wisdom 
 and rectitude of any order of human creatures 
 whatever. They will see how unreasonable it 
 were to expect, that any sort of men will fail in 
 fidelity to the great natural principle, of making 
 their own advantage the first object ; and there- 
 fore they will not be apt to listen, with the 
 gravity which in other times and regions may 
 have been shewn in listening, to injunctions of 
 gratitude for the willingness evinced by the 
 higher orders to take on them the trouble of 
 watching and guarding the people's welfare, by 
 keeping them under due control. 
 
 But neither will it necessarily be in the spirit 
 of hostility, in the worst sense of the word, that 
 a more instructed people will thus show a dimi- 
 nished credulity of reverence toward the predo- 
 minant ranks in the social economy ; and will 
 keep in habitual exercise upon them a somewhat 
 suspicious observation, and a judicial estimate ; 
 with an honest freedom in sometimes avowing 
 disapprobation, and strongly asserting any right 
 which is believed to be endangered or withheld. 
 This will only be expressing that, since all classes 
 naturally consult, by preference, their own 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 221 
 
 interests, it is plainly unfit, that one portion of the 
 community should be trusted with an unlimited 
 discretion in ordering what affects the welfare 
 of the others ; and that, in all prudence, the 
 people must refuse an entire affiance, and uncon- 
 ditional, unexamming acquiescence ; " except 
 the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh," 
 would come to harmonize, and then administer, 
 interests which are placed so unappeasably at 
 strife : — at strife ; for, what is so often asserted 
 of those interests being in reality the same, is 
 true only on that comprehensive theory which 
 neither party is prompt to understand, or willing 
 to make sacrifices of a more immediate self- 
 interest to realize ; and it is evidently impossible 
 for either, even if believing it true, to concede to 
 the other the exclusive adjustment of the prac- 
 tical mode of identification. 
 
 But only let the utmost that is possible be 
 done, to train the people, from their early years, 
 to a sound use of their reason, under a disciphne 
 for imparting a valuable portion of knowledge 
 and assiduously inculcating the principles of 
 social duty and of religion ; and then something 
 may be said, to good purpose, to their under- 
 standing and conscience, while they are main- 
 taining the competition of claims with their 
 superiors. They will then be capable of seeing 
 put in a fair balance, many things which 
 headlong ignorance would have taken all one 
 way. They will be able to appreciate many 
 
222 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 explanations, alleged causes of delay, statements 
 of difficulty between opposing reasons ; which 
 would be thrown away on an ignorant populace. 
 And it would be an inducement to their making 
 a real exertion of the understanding, that they 
 thus found themselves so formally put upon 
 their responsibility for its exercise ; that they 
 were summoned to a rational discussion, instead 
 of being addressed in the style of Pharaoh to the 
 Israelites. The strife of interests would thus 
 come to be carried on with less fierceness and 
 malice, in the spirit and manner, on the part 
 of the people. And the ground itself of the 
 contention, the substance of the matters in 
 contest, would be gradually diminished, by the 
 concessions of the higher classes to the claims 
 of the lower : for there is no affecting to dis- 
 semble, that a gi'eat mental and moral improve- 
 ment of the people would necessitate, though 
 there were not a single movement of rude force 
 in the case, important concessions to them, on 
 the part of the superior orders. A people 
 advanced to such a state, would make its moral 
 power felt in a thousand ways, and every 
 moment. This general augmentation of sense 
 and right principle would send forth, against 
 all arrangements and inveterate or more modern 
 usages, of the nature of invidious exclusion, 
 arbitrary repression, and the debasement of 
 great public interests into a detestable private 
 traflftc, an energy, which could no more be 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 223 
 
 resisted than the power of the sun, when he 
 advances in the spring to annihilate the rehcs 
 and vestiges of the winter. This plastic influ- 
 ence would modify the institutions of the national 
 community, to a state better adapted to secure 
 all the popular rights; and to convey the ge- 
 nuine, collective opinion, to bear directly on the 
 counsel and transaction of national concerns. 
 That opinion would be so unequivocally mani- 
 fested as to leave no pretence for a doubtful 
 interpretation of its signs ; and with such autho- 
 rity as to preclude even a thought of setting it 
 at defiance. 
 
 That such effects would be inseparable from 
 a great general advancement of the people in 
 knowledge and corrected character, must be 
 freely acknowledged to its disapprovers. And is 
 it because these would be the consequences, that 
 they disapprove it ? Then let them say, what 
 it is that they would expect from an opposite 
 system. What is it, that they are seriously 
 promising themselves, from the auspicious influ- 
 ence of all the ignorance, that can henceforward 
 be retained among the people of this part of the 
 world ? It is true, the remaining ignorance is 
 so great that they cannot well overrate its gene- 
 ral amount ; but how can they fail to perceive 
 the importance of those particulars in which its 
 dominion has been broken up ? There is indeed 
 a hemisphere of ''gross darkness over the people;" 
 it may be possible to withhold from it long the 
 
224 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 illumination of the sun ; but in the mean time 
 it has been rent by portentous lights and flashes, 
 which have excited a thought. and agitation not 
 to be stilled by the continuance of the gloom. 
 There have come in on the popular mind some 
 ideas, which the wisest of those who dread or 
 hate their effect there, look around in vain for 
 the means of expelling. And these glimpses of 
 partial intelligence, these lights of dubious and 
 possibly destructive direction amidst the night, 
 will continue to •prompt and lead that mind, 
 with a hazard which can cease only with the 
 opening upon it of the true daylight of know- 
 ledge. That knowledge should have been ante- 
 cedent to the falling of these inflammatory ideas 
 among the people ; and if they have come before 
 the proper time, that is to say, before the people 
 were prepared to judge rationally of their rights, 
 and to apprehend clearly the duties inseparable 
 from them as a condition of their enjoyment, 
 the calamitous consequences to the higher 
 classes, as seen in the recent history of Europe, 
 may be regarded as a righteous judgment of 
 heaven upon them, for having suffered it to be 
 possible for these new ideas of liberty and rights 
 to come upon the people in a state so unpre- 
 pared. What were all their commanding autho- 
 rities of government, their splendid ecclesiastical 
 establishments, their gi*eat personal wealth and 
 influence, — all their lofty powers and distinctions 
 which even their basest sycophants, sacerdotal 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 225 
 
 or poetical, told them, as one topic of adulation, 
 that they were not intrusted with for their own 
 sole gratification, — what were all these for, if 
 the great body of the communities over which 
 they presided, were to be retained in a state in 
 which they could not be touched by a few bold 
 speculations in favour of popular rights, without 
 exploding as with infernal fire ? How appro- 
 priate a retribution of Sovereign Justice, that 
 those who were wickedly the cause, should be 
 the victims of the effect ! 
 
 Where such a consequence has not followed, 
 but where, nevertheless, these notions of popular 
 rights have come into the minds of the people 
 very much in precedence and disproportion to 
 the general cultivation of their intelligence and 
 moral sense, it is most important that all dili- 
 gence should be given to bring up these neg- 
 lected improvements to stand in rank with these 
 too forward speculations. 
 
 Whether this shall be done or not, these 
 notions and feelings are not things come into 
 life without an instinct of what they have to do. 
 The disapprovers of schemes for throwing the 
 greatest practicable measure of sound corrective 
 knowledge into the minds of the multitude, may 
 take instruction or may decline it from seeing 
 that, both in this country and other great states 
 of Europe, there has gone forth among the 
 mass of the people a spirit of revolt from the 
 
 Q 
 
226 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 obligation, which would retain their reverence to 
 institutions on the strength simply of their being 
 established or being ancient ; a spirit that re-acts, 
 with deep and settled antipathy, against some 
 of the arrangements and claims of the order into 
 which the national community has been disposed 
 by institutions and the course of events ; a spirit 
 which regards some of the appointments and 
 requirements of that order, as little better than 
 adaptations of the system to the will and grati- 
 fication of the more fortunate divisions of the 
 species. And it has shewn itself in a very dif- 
 ferent character from that of a mere pining 
 despondency, or the impotent resentment ex- 
 cited sometimes in timidity itself by severe 
 grievance, but quelled by alarm at its own rash- 
 ness. The element and the temperament of its 
 nature, and the force of its action, have been 
 displayed in the tremendous concussions attend- 
 ing its conflict with the power arrayed in behalf 
 of the old order of things to crush it. And is 
 this spirit crushed ? Is it subdued ? Is it in 
 the least degree reduced ? — reduced, we mean, 
 in its internal power, as a combination of the 
 most absolute opinion with the impulse of some 
 of the strongest passions. 
 
 Is it, we repeat, repressed ? There may have 
 been persons who could not, " good easy men," 
 conceive a possibility of its surviving the fiery 
 storm of the whole resources of the world 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 227 
 
 converted into the materials of war, and followed 
 by the mightiest leagues and the most systematic 
 legislation, all aimed at its destruction ; sur- 
 viving to come forth with unabated vigour at 
 the opportune junctures in the future progress 
 of events ; like some great serpent, coming out 
 again to glare on the sight, with his appalling 
 glance and uninjured length of volume, after a 
 storm of missiles had sent him to his retreat, 
 and been poured in there with destructive inten'- 
 tion after him. The old approved expedients 
 against unreasonable discontents, and refractory ' 
 tempers, and local movements of hostility ex- 
 cited by some worthless competitor for power, 
 had been apphed on the grand scale ; and hence- 
 forward all would be still. It was not given to 
 these dull or spell-bound understandings to 
 apprehend that the spirit to be repressed might 
 be of a nature impassive to these expedients, 
 possibly to be confirmed by their application. 
 Repressed ! What is it that is manifesting itself 
 in the most remarkable events in the old, ^nd 
 what has been called the new world, at the pre- 
 sent time ? And what are the measures of 
 several of the great state authorities, of Europe, 
 whether adopted cooly on system, or in a fitful 
 mood between rashness and dismay ; what are, 
 especially, the meetings, conferences, and eager 
 military preparations, of the mightiest despots of 
 the globe, assembled at this very hour against a 
 
 q2 
 
228 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 small and unoffending nation,* — what are these 
 but a confession or proclamation, that the spirit 
 which the most enormous exertions had been 
 made to overwhelm, has preserved all its life 
 and energy ; like those warring agents whom 
 Milton describes as having mountains thrown 
 on them in vain ? Every year renders it but 
 more evident, that the principle in action is 
 something far different from a superficial trans- 
 ient irritation ; that it has gone the whole 
 depth of the mind ; has possessed itself of the 
 very judgment and conscience of an innumerable 
 legion, augmenting by a continual and endless 
 accession. No doubt is permitted to remain, 
 whether the real current of the popular feeling 
 has changed its direction, — to be recovered to 
 its ancient obsequious course when some great 
 branch of the Mississipi shall resume that chan- 
 nel into the sea, which it has abandoned in 
 opening for itself a new one. For when once 
 the great mass, of the lower and immensely 
 larger division of the community, shall have 
 become filled with an absolute, and almost 
 unanimous conviction, that they, the grand 
 physical agency of that community ; that they, 
 the operators, the producers, the preparers, of 
 almost all it most essentially wants ; that they, 
 
 * The meeting of imperial and royal personages at Troppau 
 and Laybach, for the detestable purpose of crushing the newly 
 acquired liberty of the kingdom of Naples. — January, 1821. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 229 
 
 the part, therefore, of the social assemblage so 
 obviously the most essential to its existence, 
 and on which all the rest must depend ; that 
 they have their condition in the great social 
 arrangement so disposed as not to acknowledge 
 this their importance, as not to secure an ade- 
 quate reward of these their services ; — we say, 
 when this shall have become the intense con- 
 viction of the millions of Europe, we would put 
 it as a question to the judgment of a sober man, 
 whether and how this state of feeling can be 
 reversed or neutralized, while those circum- 
 stances of the economy which have caused it 
 are remaining. But if it cannot, we put it to 
 his judgment at the next step, what the conse- 
 quence must ultimately be. Will he pretend 
 not to foresee any material change in an order 
 of things obnoxious to so vast a combination of 
 wills and agents ? This may indeed be seriously 
 avowed by some, who are so walled up in old 
 prejudice and presumption that they really have 
 no look out ; who, because a thing has been 
 long established, mistake its artificial substruc- 
 tion of crumbling materials for the natural rock ; 
 and it will be pretended by others, who think 
 the bravado of asserting the impossibility of the 
 overthrow may be a good policy for deterring 
 the attempt. There has not been one of the 
 great alterations effected by the popular spirit 
 within the last forty years, that was not preceded 
 by professions of contemptuous incredulity, on the 
 
230 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 part of the applauders of things as they were, 
 toward those who calculated on the effects of 
 that spirit. There were occasionally betrayed, 
 under these shows of confidence and contempt, 
 some signs of horror at the undeniable excite- 
 ment and progress of popular feeling; but the 
 scorn of all serious and monitory predictions 
 of its result was at all events to be kept up, 
 — in whatever proportions a time-serving in- 
 terest and an honest fatuity might share in 
 dictating this elated and contemptuous style. 
 Should the latter of these ingredients at pre- 
 sent predominate in the temper which throws 
 off the fume of this high style, there will 
 be little capacity for explaining the means, 
 which the defiers of all revolution reckon 
 on, as efficacious against such consequences as 
 we should anticipate from the progress of disap- 
 probation and aversion in the people ; unless 
 indeed the security mainly relied on is just 
 that plain simple expedient — force, for all 
 nations on earth downright force. Is it plainly 
 this that is meant, when persons disinclined 
 to speak out give us a circumlocution of delicate 
 phrases, " the conservative energies of the 
 public institutions," perhaps, and others of 
 similar cast? — which fine phrases suggest to 
 one's imagination the ornamented fashion of 
 the handle and sheath of the scimitar, which 
 is not the less keen, nor the less ready to 
 be drawn, for all this finery that hides and 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 231 
 
 garnishes it ; and which may not even remain 
 peaceful till there be a real aggression to ex- 
 cuse its vengeance. 
 
 The economy of states shall not be modi- 
 fied in favour of the great body of those who 
 constitute them. — And are, then, the higher 
 and privileged portions of the national com- 
 munities to have, henceforward, just this one 
 grand object of their existence, this chief 
 employment for their knowledge, means, and 
 power, namely, to keep down the lower orders 
 of their fellow-citizens by stress of coercion 
 and punishment ? Are they resolved and pre- 
 pared for a rancorous, interminable, hostility 
 in prosecution of such a benign purpose ; with 
 a continual exhaustion upon it of the re- 
 sources which might be applied to diminish that 
 wretchedness of the people, which is the grand 
 inflamer of those principles that have caused 
 an earthquake under the foundations of the 
 old social systems? But " interminable" is no 
 proper epithet to be applied to such a course. 
 This policy of a bare uncompromising rigour, 
 exerted to keep the people just where they are, 
 in preference to a plan formed upon a calcu- 
 lation of a material change, and adapted to 
 
 prepare them for it how long could it be 
 
 successful, — not to ask what would be the value 
 or the glory of that success ? With the light 
 of recent history to aid the prognostication, by 
 what superstitious mode of estimating the 
 
232 ON POPULAR ICxiNORANCE. 
 
 self-preserving and self-avenging competence of 
 any artificial form of social order, can v^^e believe 
 in its power to throw back the general opinions, 
 determinations, and efforts, of the mass of 
 mankind in endless recoil on themselves ? That 
 must be a very firm structure, must be of 
 gigantic mass or most excellent basis and con- 
 formation, against which the ocean shall unre- 
 mittingly wear and foam in vain. And it does 
 not appear what there can be of such impreg- 
 nable consistence in any particular construction 
 of the social economy which is, by the sup- 
 position, resolved to be maintained in sovereign 
 immutability, in permanent frustration of the 
 persevering, ever-growing, aim and impulse of 
 the great majority, pressing on to achieve 
 important innovations in their favour ; inno- 
 vations in those systems of institution and 
 usage, under which they will never cease to 
 think they have had far less happiness than 
 they ought to have had. We cannot see how 
 this impulse can be so repelled or diverted that 
 it shall not prevail at length, to the effect of 
 either bearing down, or wearing away, a portion 
 of the order of things which the ascendant 
 classes in every part of Europe would have 
 fondly wished to maintain in perpetuity, without 
 one particle of surrender. 
 
 But though they cannot preserve its entire- 
 ness, the manner in which it shall yield to 
 modification is in a ^reat measure at their 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE, 233 
 
 command. And here is the important point on 
 which all these observations are meant to bear. 
 If a movement has really begun in the general 
 popular mind of the nations, and if the principle 
 of it is growing and insuppressible, so that it 
 must in one manner or another ultimately pre- 
 vail, what will the state be of any national 
 community where it shall be an unenlightened, 
 half-barbarous, people that so prevails? — a 
 people no better informed, perhaps, than to 
 believe that all the hardship and distress en- 
 dured by themselves and their forefathers were 
 wrongs, which they suffered from the higher 
 orders ; than to ascribe to bad government, and 
 the rapacity and selfishness of the rich, the very 
 evils caused by inclement seasons ; and than to 
 assume it as beyond question, that the whole 
 accumulation of their resentments, brought out 
 into action at last, is only justice demanding and 
 inflicting a retribution. 
 
 In such an event, what would not the supe- 
 rior orders be glad to give and forego, in com- 
 promise with principles, tempers, and demands, 
 which they will know they should never have 
 had to encounter, to the end of time, if, instead 
 of spending their vast advantages on merely 
 their own state and indulgence, they, had 
 applied them in a mode of operation and in- 
 fluence tending to improve, in every way, the 
 situation and character of the people ? It is 
 true, that such a wild triumph of overpowering 
 
234 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 violence would necessarily be short. A blind 
 turbulent monster of popular power never can 
 for a long time maintain the domination of a 
 political community. It would rage and riot 
 itself out of breath and strength, succumb 
 under some strong coercion of its own creating, 
 and lie subject and stupified, till its spirit should 
 be recovered and incensed for new commotion. 
 But this impossibility of a very prolonged 
 reign of confusion, would be little consolation 
 for the classes against whose privileged con- 
 dition the first tremendous eruption should 
 have driven. It would not much cheer a man 
 who should see his abode carried away, and 
 his fields and plantations devastated, to tell 
 him that the agent of this ruin was only a 
 transient mountain torrent. A short prevalence 
 of the overturning force would have sufiiced, 
 for. the subversion of the proudest, longest 
 established state of privilege ; and most im- 
 probable would it be, that those who lost it 
 in the tumult, would find the new authority, 
 which would arise as that tumult subsided, 
 either able or disposed to restore it. They 
 might perhaps, (on a favourable supposition,) 
 survive in personal safety, but in humiliated 
 fortunes, to ruminate on their manner of occu- 
 pying their former elevated situation, and of 
 employing its ample means of power, a due 
 share of which, exerted for the improvement of 
 the general condition, both intellectual and civil. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 235 
 
 with an accompanying liberal yet very gradual 
 concession of privileges to the people, would 
 have prevented the catastrophe. 
 
 Let us urge then, that a zealous endeavour 
 to render it absolutely impossible that, in any 
 change whatever, the destinies of a nation 
 should fall under the power of an ignorant infu- 
 riated multitude, may take place of the pre- 
 sumption that there is no great change to be 
 ever effected by the progressive and conscious 
 importance of the people ; a presumption than 
 which nothing can appear more like infatuation, 
 when we look at the recent. scenes and present 
 temperament of the moral world. Educate the 
 people ; train them to sound sense ; civilize 
 them ; promote the reformation of their morals ; 
 inculcate the principles of religion, simply and 
 solemnly as religion, as a thing directly of 
 divine dictation, and not as if half of its autho- 
 rity were in virtue of human institutions; let 
 the higher orders generally make it evident to 
 the multitude that they are desirous to raise 
 them in value, and promote their happiness ; 
 and then whatever the demands of the people as 
 a body, thus improving in understanding and 
 the sense of justice, shall come to be, and what- 
 ever modification their preponderance may ulti- 
 mately enforce on the great social arrangements, 
 it will be infallibly certain that there never ca?i 
 be a love of disorder, an insolent anarchy, a 
 prevailing spirit of revenge and devastation. 
 
236 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 Such a conduct of the ascendant ranks would, 
 in this nation at least, secure that, as long as 
 the world lasts, there never would be any formi- 
 dable commotion, or violent sudden changes. 
 All those modifications of the national economy 
 which an improving people would aspire and 
 would deserve to obtain, would be gradually 
 accomplished, in a manner by which no party 
 would be injured, and all would be the happier.* 
 
 * The considerations in tlie latter part of this section (so 
 plainly on the surface of the subject that they would occur to 
 any thoughtful and observant man) have been verified in part 
 by the course of events in our country, since the time they 
 were written. At that time the superior, and till then irre- 
 sistibly and invariably predominant, portion of the community, 
 felt themselves in perfect security against any comprehensive 
 and radical change within the ensuing twelve or fourteen years. 
 There might indeed be one or two matters in the established 
 national system in which they might deem it not unlikely that 
 the advocates and labourers for innovation would be suc- 
 cessful ; but so prodigious an amount of innovation did not 
 come within the view of even a feverish dream. Any man 
 who should have predicted, especially, the recent greatest 
 achievement against the inveterate system would have been 
 laughed at as an incorrigible visionary ; so proudly confident 
 were they that the structure would be kept compact and 
 impregnable in all its essential parts, by the cement of 
 ancient institution, national veneration, opulence, and the 
 inherence of actual power, possessed from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 In the next place, they were obstinately resolute against 
 all material concession. When at intervals the complaints, 
 claims, and remonstrances of the people sought to be heard, 
 they treated them as unreasonable, absurd, factious ; and 
 asserted that none of the good sense and right feeling of the 
 nation went that way. They declared that the existing order 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 237 
 
 of things was on the whole so superlatively excellent that, if 
 there were, perhaps, any trifling defects, it were far better to 
 let them alone than presume to touch with an innovating hand 
 the integrity of so noble a system, the admiration and envy of 
 all the world. As it was, it had " worked well" for our hap- 
 piness and glory ; and who could say, if a tampering of alter- 
 ation were once suffered to begin, where it might end ? 
 Order the people to be quiet ; let their factious demands and 
 seditious movements be promptly and firmly repressed by 
 authority ; and they would sink into insignificance and 
 silence. To think of such a thing as condescending to con- 
 ciliate by moderate concessions would be weakness, and n^ight 
 eventually bring a hazard which otherwise could have no 
 existence. 
 
 And now for the consequence : the popular spirit, thus set 
 at nought in present account and in calculation for the future, 
 was discouraged from active outward manifestation, by the 
 inveterate, perfectly organized, and, for the present, resistless 
 domination. But under the pressure of wide-spread and 
 unabating grievance, which quickened and envenomed every 
 sentiment previously entertained regarding the rights and 
 wrongs of the people, it was gradually acquiring, throughout 
 the country, a more determinate sense of being absolved from 
 all submissive respect toward the ascendant party, a more 
 entire conviction of its right to vindicate its claims in any 
 manner that should become practicable, and a hostility, but 
 the more deep and intense for its being kept under by despon- 
 dency of present success, against those who were rejecting and 
 contemptuously defying those claims. It wanted, then, only 
 some occurrence that should present a possibility and a hope 
 of success to burst out in sudden ardour. It was thus in 
 collective power and readiness for action, when several events 
 of prodigious excitement came close together ; and then, like 
 a stream in one of the Swiss valleys, dammed up by a mound 
 of earth or ice fallen across, to a lake, deepening without noise 
 till its vast weight breaks away the obstruction with a tre- 
 mendous tumult, the popular will bore down the aristocratic 
 embankment, consolidated through so many years or ages. 
 The overpowered party found the consequence of their obsti- 
 nate and entire resistance ; and had to reflect with unmixed 
 
238 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 mortification how much less than they liad lost, and with a 
 hostility continuing unmitigated on the part of those who had 
 taken it from them, would have been received with gratitude 
 if yielded in the way of gradual voluntary concession. Hap- 
 pily the change was not left to be accomplished by physical 
 force, as all such changes must be in purely despotic states ;. 
 but the people believe that they chiefly owe the forced sur- 
 render to the alarm which their demonstrations excited lest 
 they should bring the question ere long to that arbitrement. 
 
 But in the last place, there is a deplorable and portentous 
 circumstance attending this sudden and signal ascendency of 
 the popular spirit, and which throws a strong light on the 
 criminal infatuation of a State that suffers the commonalty of 
 its citizens to remain grossly uncultivated and uncivilized — 
 perhaps even fancies it sees in that ignorance a main security 
 for its own stability. The disastrous fact is, that the people 
 have acquired their power and privileges before they are, 
 generally speaking, qualified for a wise and useful exercise of 
 them. A large proportion of those who are now brought into 
 what may be called political existence have grown up so 
 destitute of all means and habits for a right use of their minds, 
 that their notions, wishes, expectations, and determinations, 
 respecting public interests, will exemplify any thing rather 
 than sound judgment. And the proportion so raised is but a 
 very minor part of the multitude in which the popular spirit 
 is embodied and vehemently excited. Immense numbers on 
 a lower level, and having no formal political capacity to act in, 
 are nevertheless pervaded by a spirit which will bring the 
 rude impulse of mighty mass and combination into the move- 
 ment of the popular will. 
 
 If appalled at such a view, will not they who have so long 
 held the sovereign control over the national economy feel the 
 bitterest regret that it had not been given them to obviate the 
 perils of such a crisis and such a change, or rather to prevent 
 such a crisis and a change so abrupt, by exertions in every 
 way, and on the widest scale, to rescue the people from their 
 ignorance and barbarism, instead of trusting to it for an un- 
 contested undisturbed continuance of their own domination ? 
 But they scorned the idea, if it ever occurred, that the many- 
 headed, many-handed " monster," (so named in the dialect 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 239 
 
 of some of them,) after lying prone, and inert, and submissive, 
 from time immemorial, should at last become instinct with 
 spirit, and rise up roaring in defiance of their power. 
 
 It is now for them to consider whether, by maintaining a 
 temper and attitude of sullen, vindictive, pugnacious alienation 
 from the people, they shall wilfully aggravate the dangerous 
 consequences threatened by so sudden a revolution ; or endea- 
 vour to intercept or mitigate them by giving their best assist- 
 ance to every plan and expedient for rescuing the lower orders 
 from the curse and calamity of ignorance and barbarism. 
 Other remedial measures, besides that of education, are 
 imperiously demanded by the miserable and formidable con- 
 dition of the populace, but no other, nor all others together, 
 can avail without it. 
 
SECTION V. 
 
 Extreme poverty of Religious Knowledge among the uneducated people : 
 Their notions respecting God, Providence, Jesus Christ, the invisible 
 world. — Fatal effect of their want of mental discipline as causing an 
 ijiaptitude to receive religious information. — Exemplifications, — in a 
 supposed experiment of religious instruction in a friendly visit to a 
 numerous uneducated family; in the stupidity and thoughtlessness 
 often betrayed in attendance on public religious services ; in the 
 impossibility of imparting religious truths, with any degree of clear- 
 ness, to ignorant persons, when alarmed into some serious concern by 
 sickness ; in the insensibility and invincible delusion sometimes re- 
 tained in the near approach to death. — Rare instances of the admirable 
 efficacy of religion to animate and enlarge the faculties, even in the 
 old age of an ignorant man. — Excuses for the intellectual inaptitude 
 and perversion of uncultivated religious minds.— Animadversions on 
 religious teachers. 
 
 The most serious form of the evil caused by a 
 want of mental improvement, is that which is 
 exposed to us in its consequences with respect 
 to the most important concern of all. Religion. 
 This has been briefly adverted to in a former 
 part of these descriptive observations. But the 
 subject seems to merit a more amplified illus- 
 tration, and may be of sufficient interest to 
 excuse some appearance of repetition. The 
 special view in which we wish to place it, is 
 that of the inaptitude of uncultivated minds for 
 receivi?ig religious instruction. — But first, a slight 
 estimate may be attempted of the actual state 
 of religious notions among our uneducated 
 population. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 241 
 
 Some notion of such a concern, something 
 different in their consciousness from the abso- 
 lute negation of the idea, something that faintly 
 responds to the terms which would be used by 
 a person conversing with them, in the way of 
 questioning them on the subject, may be pre- 
 sumed to exist in the minds of all who are 
 advanced a considerable way into youth, or 
 come to mature age, in a country where all are 
 familiar with several of the principal terms of 
 theology, and have the monitory spectacle of 
 edifices for religious use, on spots appointed also 
 for the interment of the dead. If this sort of 
 measured caution in the assumption seem bor- 
 dering on the ridiculous, we would recommend 
 those who would smile at it to make some little 
 experiments. It would not be difficult to insi- 
 nuate themselves into the company of some of 
 the innumerable rustics who have grown up 
 destitute of every thing worth calling educa- 
 tion ; or of the equally ill-fated beings in the 
 alleys, precincts, and lower employments, of 
 towns. They might manage to avoid an abrupt- 
 ness and judicial formality, which would prevent 
 the readiness to be communicative, while they 
 contrived to give the effect, without the express 
 form, of questioning, to expressions meant to 
 draw out the thoughts of some of these persons 
 respecting God, Jesus Christ, the human soul, 
 the invisible world. And the answers would 
 often put them to a stand to conceive, under 
 
 R 
 
242 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 what suspension of the laws of rational ex- 
 istence the utterers could have been passing 
 so many years in the world. These answers 
 might dispel as by a sudden shock the easy and 
 contented assurance, if so unknowing a notion 
 had been entertained, that almost all the people 
 must, in one way or another, have become 
 decently apprised of a few first principles of 
 religion; that this could not have failed to be 
 the case in what was expressly constituted as a 
 great christian community, with an obligation 
 upon it, that none of its members should be left 
 destitute of the most essential requisite to their 
 well-being. This agreeable assurance would 
 vanish, like a dream interrupted, at the spectacle 
 thus presented, of persons only not quite as 
 devoid of those first principles, after living 
 eighteen, thirty, forty, or twice forty years, 
 under the superintendence of that community, 
 as if they had been the aboriginal rovers of the 
 American forests, or natives of unvisited coral- 
 built spots in the ocean. 
 
 If these examiners were to prosecute the in- 
 vestigation widely, and with an effect on their 
 sentiments correspondent to the enlarging dis- 
 closure of facts, they would find themselves 
 fallen into a very altered estimate of this our 
 christian tract of the earth. A fancied sunshine, 
 spread over it before, would have faded away. 
 From appearing to them, according to an 
 accustomed notion, peculiarly auspicious, as if 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 243 
 
 almost by some virtue of its climate, to the 
 growth of religious intelligence in the minds of 
 the people, it might come to be regarded as 
 favourable to the development of all things 
 rather than that. Plants and trees, the diver- 
 sity of animal forms and powers, the human 
 frame, the features enlarging or enlarged to 
 manhood in the younger persons looked at by 
 the supposed examiner while answering his 
 questions, with their passions also, and pre- 
 vaiHng dispositions — see how all things can un- 
 fold themselves in our territory, and grow and 
 enlarge to their completeness, — except the ideas 
 of the human soul relating to the Almighty, and 
 to the grand purpose of its own existence ! 
 
 The supposed answers would in many in- 
 stances hetray, that any thought of God at all 
 was of very rare occurrence, the idea having 
 never become strongly associated with any thing 
 beheld in the whole creation. We should think 
 it probable, as we have said before, that with 
 many, while in health, weeks often pass away 
 without this idea being once so presented as to 
 fix the mind in attention to it for one moment 
 of time. If they could be set to any such task 
 as that of retracing, at the end of the day or 
 week, the course of their thoughts, to recollect 
 what particulars in the series had struck the 
 most forcibly and staid the longest, it may be 
 suspected that this idea, thus impressively ap- 
 prehended, would be as rare a recollection as 
 
 r2 
 
244 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 that of having seen a splendid meteor. Yet 
 during that space of time, their thoughts, such 
 as they were, shall have run through thousands 
 of changes ; and even the name of God may have 
 been pronounced by them a multitude of times, 
 in jocularity or imprecation. Thus there is a 
 broad easy way to atheism through thoughtless 
 ignorance, as well as a narrow and difficult one 
 through subtle speculation. 
 
 But that idea of God which has, by some 
 means, found its way into their understandings, 
 to abide there so nearly in silence and oblivion, — 
 what is it, when some direct call does really 
 evoke it ? It is generally a gross approximation 
 of the conception of the Infinite Being to the 
 likeness of man. If what they have heard of 
 his being a Spirit, has indeed some little effect 
 in prevention of the total debasement of the 
 idea, it prevents it rather by confusion than by 
 magnificence. It may somewhat restrain and 
 baffle the tendency of the imagination to a 
 direct degrading definition ; but it does so by a 
 dissolution of the idea as into an attenuated 
 cloud. And ever and anon, this cloudy diffu- 
 sion is again drawing in, and shaping itself 
 toward an image, immense perhaps, and spec- 
 tral, and portentous across the firmament, but in 
 some strong analogy to the human mode of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 The divine attribute which is apprehended 
 by them with most of an impression of reality. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 245 
 
 is a certain vastness of power. But, through 
 the grossness of their intellectual atmosphere, 
 this appears to them in the character of some- 
 thing prodigiously huge, rather than sublimely 
 glorious. — As considered in his quaHty of moral 
 judicial Governor, God is regarded by some of 
 them as more disposed, than there is any rea- 
 sonable cause, to be displeased with what is done 
 in this world. But the far greater number have 
 no prevailing sentiment that lie takes any very 
 vigilant account or concern.* And even those 
 
 * Some have no very distinct impression the one way or the 
 other. Not very long since, a friend of the writer, in one of 
 the midland counties, fell into talk, on a Sunday, with a man 
 who had been in some very plain violation of the consecrated 
 character of the day. He seriously animadverted on this, 
 adding, Don't you think God will be displeased at and punish 
 such conduct ? or words to that effect. The man, after a 
 moment's consideration, answered, with unaffected cool sim- 
 plicity, exactly thus : " That's according as how a takes it." 
 
 Numerous anecdotes of the same cast have been more 
 recently heard ; and among them that of a conversation with 
 a thoughtless man, of worthless character, not in the lowest 
 condition in society, and then consciously near death. The 
 religious visitor represented to him the serious and alarming 
 situation of a man on the point of going from a sinful life into 
 the presence of God as a Judge. The man, with a sort of 
 general acknowledgment that it was so, yet hoped that God 
 would not be severe with him. But the visiter anxiously 
 pressed upon him the consideration that God is a just Being, 
 and judges by a holy law ; to which at last the answer was, 
 with little emotion, " Then God and I must fight it out as 
 well as we can." The phrase, in his use of it, did not mean 
 any thing of the nature of a hostile contest, but simply the 
 settling of an affair, which he thought might be done without 
 any great danger or trouble. 
 
246 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 who entertain the more ungracious apprehension, 
 have it not in sufficient force to make them, 
 once in whole months, dehberately think it 
 worth while to care what he may disapprove. 
 
 The notions that should answer to the doc- 
 trine of a Providence, are a confusion of some 
 crude idea of a divine superintendence, with 
 stronger fancies and impressions of luck and 
 chance ; a confusion of them not unaptly exem- 
 plified in a grave and well-meaning sentiment 
 heard from a man in a temporal condition to be 
 envied by many of his neighbours, *' Providence 
 must take its chance." And these are still further, 
 and most uncouthly, confounded by the admix- 
 ture of the ancient heathen notion of fate, 
 reduced from its philosophy to its dregs. In 
 many instances, however, this last obtains such 
 a predominance, as to lessen the confusion, and 
 withal to preclude, in a great measure, the sense 
 of accountableness. In neither of these rude 
 states of the understanding, (that which con- 
 founds Providence and chance, and that which 
 sinks in dull acquiescence to something ob- 
 scurely imagined like fate,) is there any serious 
 admission, at least during the enjoyment of 
 health, of the duty or advantage of prayer. 
 
 The supposed examiner may endeavour to 
 possess himself of the notions concerning the 
 Redeemer of the world. They would be found, 
 in numerous instances, amounting literally to no 
 more than, that Jesus Christ was a worthy kind 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 247 
 
 of person^ (the word has actually been '' gentle- 
 man/' in more than one instance that we have 
 heard from unquestionable testimony,) who 
 once, somewhere, (these national christians had 
 never, in their lives, thought of inquiring when 
 or where,) did a great deal of good, and was very 
 ill used by bad people. The people now, they 
 think, bad as they may be, would not do so in 
 the like case. Some of these persons may oc- 
 casionally have been at church ; and are just 
 aware that his name often recurs in its services ; 
 they never considered why ; but they have a 
 vague impression of its repetition having some 
 kind of virtue, perhaps rather in the nature of a 
 spell. — The names of the four evangelists are by 
 some held literally and technically available for 
 such an use. 
 
 A few steps withdrawn from this thickest of 
 the mental fog, there are many who are not 
 entirely uninformed of something having been 
 usually affirmed, by religious formularies and 
 teachers, of Jesus Christ's being more than a 
 man, and of his having done something of great 
 importance toward preventing our being punished 
 for our sins. This combination of a majestic 
 superiority to the human nature, with a subsist- 
 ence yet confessedly human, just passes their 
 minds like a shape formed of a shadow, as one 
 of the unaccountable things that may be as it is 
 said, for what they know, but which they need 
 not trouble themselves to think about. As to 
 
248 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the great things said to be done by him, to save 
 men from being punished, they see indeed no 
 necessity for such an expedient, but if it is so, 
 very right, and so much the better ; for between 
 that circumstance in our favour, and God's being 
 too good, after all that is said of his holiness 
 and wrath, to be severe on such poor creatures, 
 we must have a good chance of coming off safely 
 at last. But multitudes of the miserably poor, 
 however wicked, have a settled assurance of this 
 coming off well at last, independently of any 
 thing effected for men by the Mediator : they 
 shall be exempted, they believe, from any future 
 suffering in consideration of their having suffered 
 so much here. There is nothing, in the scanty 
 creed of great numbers, more firmly held than 
 this. 
 
 It is true, they believe that the most atro- 
 ciously wdcked must go to a state of punishment 
 after death. They consider murderers, espe- 
 cially, as under this doom. But the offences so 
 adjudged, according to any settled estimate they 
 have of the demerit of bad actions, are comprised 
 in a very short catalogue. At least it is short 
 if we could take it exclusively of the additions 
 made to it by the resentments of individuals. 
 For each one is apt to make his own particular 
 addition to it, of some offence which he would 
 never have accounted so heinous, but that it has 
 happened to be committed against him. We can 
 recollect the exultation of sincere faith, seen 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 249 
 
 mingling with the anger, of an offended man, 
 while predictirig, as well as imprecating, this 
 retribution of some injury he had suffered ; a 
 real injury, indeed, yet of a kind which he would 
 have held in small account had he only seen it 
 done to another person. — As to the nature of 
 that future punishment, the ideas of these neg- 
 lected minds go scarcely at all beyond the 
 images of corporal anguish, conveyed by the 
 well known metaphors. They have no impres- 
 sive idea of the pain of remorse, and scarcely 
 the faintest conception of an infelicity inflicted 
 by the conscious loss of the Divine favour. 
 
 It is most striking to observe how almost 
 wholly negative are their conceptions of that 
 future happiness which is something — but what ? 
 — as the necessary alternative of the evil they 
 so easily assure themselves of escaping. The 
 abstracted, contemplative, and elevated ideas 
 of the celestial happiness are far above their 
 apprehension, and indeed, though they were 
 not, would be little attractive. And the more 
 ordinary modes of representing it in religious 
 discourse, (if they should ever have heard 
 enough of such discourse to be acquainted with 
 them,) are too uncongenial with their notions of 
 pleasure to have a welcome, or abiding place, 
 in their imagination or affections. Thus the 
 soul, as to this great subject, is vacant and cold. 
 And here the reflection again returns, what an 
 inexpressible poverty of the mind there is, when 
 
250 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the people have no longer a mythology, and 
 yet have not obtained in its place any know- 
 ledge of the true religion. The martial vagrants 
 of Scandinavia glowed with the vivid anticipa- 
 tions of Valhalla; the savages of the western 
 continent had their animating visions of the 
 " land of souls;" the modern christian barba- 
 rians of England, who also expect to live after 
 death, do not know what they mean by their 
 phrase of *' going to heaven." 
 
 Most of this class of persons think very little 
 in any way whatever of the invisible spiritual 
 economy. And some of them would be pleased 
 with a still more complete exemption from such 
 thought. For there are among them those who 
 are liable to be occasionally affected with certain 
 ghostly recognitions of something out of the 
 common world. But it is remarkable, how little 
 these may contribute to enforce the salutary 
 impressions of religion. For instance, a man 
 subject to the terror of apparitions shall not 
 therefore be in the smallest degree the less pro- 
 fane, except just at the time that this terror is 
 upon him. A number of persons, not one of 
 whom durst walk, alone, at midnight, round 
 a lonely church, encompassed with graves, to 
 which has perhaps lately been added that of a 
 notoriously wicked man, will nevertheless, on 
 a fine Sunday morning, form a row of rude 
 idlers, standing in the road to this very church, 
 to vent their jokes on the persons going thither 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 251 
 
 to attend the offices of religion, and on those 
 offices themselves. 
 
 Such, as regarding religion, is the state out 
 of which it is desired to redeem a multitude of 
 the people of this land. Or rather we should 
 say, it is sought to save a multitude from 
 being consigned to it. For consider, in the 
 next place, (what we wished especially to 
 point at, in this most important article in the 
 enumeration of the evils of ignorance,) consider 
 what a fatal inaptitude for receiving the truths 
 of religion is created by the neglect of train- 
 ing minds to the exercise of their faculties, 
 and the possession of the elements of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 How inevitably it must be so, from the nature 
 of the case ! — There is a sublime economy of 
 invisible realities. There is the Supreme Ex- 
 istence, an infinite and eternal Spirit. There 
 are spiritual existences, that have kindled into 
 brightness and power, from nothing, at his cre- 
 ating will. There is an universal government, 
 omnipotent, all-wise, and righteous, of that 
 Supreme Being, over the creation. There is 
 the immense tribe of human spirits, in a most 
 pecuhar and alarming predicament, held under 
 eternal obligation of conformity to a law pro- 
 ceeding from the holiness of that Being, but 
 perverted to a state of disconformity to it, and 
 opposition to him. Next, there is a signal 
 anomaly of moral government, the constitution 
 
252 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of a new state of relation between the Supreme 
 Governor and this alienated race, through a 
 Mediator, who makes an atonement for human 
 iniquity, and stands representative before Al- 
 mighty Justice, for those who in grateful accord- 
 ance to the mysterious appointment consign 
 themselves to his charge. There are the several 
 doctrines declaratory of this new constitution 
 through all its parts. There is the view of 
 religion in its operative character, or the doc- 
 trine of the application of its truths and precepts 
 by a divine agency to transform the mind and 
 rectify the life. And this solemn array of all 
 the sublimest reality and most important intel- 
 hgence is extending infinitely away beyond the 
 sensible horizon of our present state to an 
 invisible world, to which the spirits of men 
 proceed at death for judgment and retribution, 
 and with the prospect of living for ever. 
 
 Look at this scene of faith, so distinct, and 
 stretching to such remoteness, from the field of 
 ordinary things ; of a subsistence which it is for 
 intellect alone to apprehend ; presenting objects 
 with which intellect alone can hold converse. 
 Look at this scene ; and then consider, what 
 manner of beings you are calling upon to enter 
 into it by contemplation. Beings who have 
 never learned to think at all. Beings who have 
 hardly ever once, in their whole lives, made a 
 real effort to direct and concentrate the action 
 of their faculties on any thing abstracted from 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 253 
 
 the objects palpable to the senses ; whose entire 
 attention has been engrossed, from their infancy, 
 with the common business, the low amusements 
 and gratifications, the idle talk, the local occur- 
 rences, which formed the whole compass of the 
 occupation, and practically acknowledged in- 
 terests, of their progenitors. Beings who have 
 never been made in the least familiar with even 
 the matters of fact, those especially of the scrip- 
 ture history, by which religious truths have been 
 expressed and illustrated in the substantial form 
 of events, and personal characters. Beings who, 
 in natural consequence of this unexercised and 
 unfurnished condition of their understandings, 
 will combine the utmost aversion to any effort 
 of purely intellectual labour, with the especial 
 dislike which it is in the human disposition to 
 feel toward this class of subjects. What kind 
 of ideas should you imagine to be raised in their 
 minds, by all the words you might employ, to 
 place within their intellectual vision some portion 
 of this spiritual order of things, — even should 
 you be able, which you often would not, to en- 
 gage any effort of attention to the subject ? — 
 And yet we have heard this disqualification for 
 receiving religious knowledge, in consequence 
 of the want of early mental culture, made very 
 light of by men whose pretensions to judgment 
 had no less a foundation than an academical 
 course and a consecrated profession. They 
 would maintain, with every appearance of think- 
 
254 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 ing so, that a very little, that the barest trifle, of 
 regulated exercise of the mind in youth, would 
 be enough for the common people as a prepa- 
 ration for gaining as much knowledge of rehgion 
 as they could ever want ; that any such thing as 
 a practice of reading, (a practice of very hazar- 
 dous tendency,) would be needless for the 
 purpose, since they might gain a competence 
 of that knowledge by attendance on the public 
 ministration in the church. And there must 
 have been a very recent acquiescence in a new 
 fashion of opinion, if numbers of the same class 
 of men would not, in honestly avowing their 
 thoughts, say something not far different at this 
 hour. 
 
 But the pretended facility of gaining a com- 
 petence of religious knowledge by such persons 
 on such terms, can only mean, that the smallest 
 conceivable portion of it may suffice. For we 
 may appeal to those pious and benevolent per- 
 sons who have made the most numerous trials, 
 for testimony to the inaptitude of uneducated 
 people to receive that kind of instruction. You 
 have visited, perhaps, some numerous family, or 
 Sunday assemblage of several related famihes ; 
 to which you had access without awkward intru- 
 sion, in consequence of the acquaintance arising 
 from near neighbourhood, or of little services 
 you had rendered, or of the circumstance of any 
 of their younger children coming to your charity 
 schools. You were soon made sensible what a 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 255 
 
 sterile blighted spot of rational nature you were 
 in, by indications unequivocal to your percep- 
 tion, though, it may be, not easily reducible to 
 exact description. And those indications were 
 perhaps almost equally apparent in the young 
 persons, in those advanced to the middle of life, 
 and in those who were evidently destined not 
 long to remain in it, the patriarch, perhaps, and 
 the eldest matron, of the kindred company. 
 You attempted by degrees, with all managements 
 of art, as if you had been seeking to gain a 
 favour for yourselves, to train into the talk 
 some topic bearing toward religion ; and which 
 could be followed up into a more explicit refer- 
 ence to that great subject, without the abrupt- 
 ness which causes instant silence and recoil. 
 We will suppose that the gloom of such a moral 
 scene was not augmented to you, by the morti- 
 fication of observing impatience of this sus- 
 pension of their usual and favourite tenour of 
 discourse, betrayed in marks of suppressed irri- 
 tation, or rather by the withdrawing of one, and 
 another, from the company. But it was quite 
 enough to render the moments and feelings 
 some of the most disconsolate you had ever 
 experienced, to have thus immediately before 
 you a number of rational beings as in a dark 
 prison-house, and to feel the impotence of your 
 friendly efforts to bring them out. Their dark- 
 ness of ignorance infused into your spirit the 
 darkness of melancholy, when you perceived 
 
256 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 that the fittest words you could think of, in 
 every change and combination in which you 
 could dispose them, failed to impart to their 
 understanding, in the meaning you wanted to 
 convey, the most elementary a^nd essential ideas 
 of the most momentous subject. 
 
 You thought again, perhaps, and again. Surely 
 this mode of expression, or thisy as it is in words 
 familiar to them, will define the thing to their 
 apprehension. But you were forced to perceive 
 that the common phraseology of the language, 
 those words which make the substance of ordi- 
 nary discourse on ordinary subjects, had not, for 
 the understandings of these persons, a general 
 applicableness. It seemed as if the mere ele- 
 mental vehicle, (if we may so name it,) available 
 indifferently for conveying all sorts of sense, 
 except science, had become in its meaning 
 special and exclusive for their own sort of topics. 
 Their narrow associations had rendered it in- 
 capable of conveying sense to them on matters 
 foreign to their habits. When used on a subject 
 to which they were quite unaccustomed, it be- 
 came like a stream which, though one and the 
 same current, flows clear on the one side, and 
 muddy (as we sometimes see for a space) on the 
 other; and to them it was clear only at their own 
 edge. And if thus even the plain popular lan- 
 guage turned dark on their understandings when 
 employed in explanation of religion, it is easy to 
 imagine what had been the success of any thing 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 257 
 
 approaching to a more technical phraseology, 
 though it went no further than such terms as 
 are used in the Bible. 
 
 You continued, however, the effort for a 
 while. As desirous to shew you due civility, 
 some of the persons, perhaps the oldest, would 
 give assent to what you said, with some sign of 
 acknowledgment of the importance of the con- 
 cern. The assent would perhaps be expressed 
 in a form meant and believed to be equivalent 
 to what you had said. And when it gave an 
 intelligible idea, it might probably betray the 
 grossest possible misconception of the first prin- 
 ciples of Christianity. It might be a crude 
 formation from the very same substance of which 
 some of the worst errors of popery are consti- 
 tuted ; and might strongly suggest to you, in a 
 glance of thought, how easily popery might 
 have become the religion of ignorance ; how 
 naturally ignorance and corrupt feeling mixing 
 with a slight vague notion of Christianity, would 
 turn it into just such a thing as popery. You 
 tried, perhaps, with repeated modifications of 
 your expression, and attempts at illustration, to 
 loosen the false notion, and to place the true one 
 contrasted with it in such a near obviousness 
 to the apprehension, that at least the difference 
 should be seen,. and (perhaps you hoped) a little 
 movement excited to think further of the sub- 
 ject, and make a serious question of it. But all 
 in vain. The hoary subject of your too late 
 
258 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 instruction, (a spectacle reminding you painfully 
 of the words which denominate the sign of old 
 age " a crown of glory/') either would still take 
 it that it came all to the same thing, or, if 
 compelled to perceive that you really were trying 
 to make him unihink his poor old notions, and 
 learn something new and contrary, would pro- 
 bably retreat, in a little while, into a half sullen 
 half despondent silence, after observing, that he 
 was too old, '* the worse was the luck," to be 
 able to learn about such things, w^hich he 
 never had, like you, the ^^ scholarship" and the 
 time for. 
 
 In several of the party you perceived the 
 signs of almost a total blank. They seemed 
 but to be waiting for any trifling incident to 
 take their attention, and keep their minds ahve. 
 Some one with a little more of listening curi- 
 osity, but without caring about the subject, 
 might have to observe, that it seemed to him 
 the same kind of thing that the methodist 
 parson, (the term most likely to be used if any 
 very serious and earnest christian instructor had 
 appeared in the neighbourhood,) was lately 
 saying in such a one's funeral sermon. It is 
 too possible that one or two of the visages of 
 the company, of the younger people especially, 
 might wear, during a good part of the time, 
 somewhat of a derisive smile, meaning, " What 
 odd kind of stuff all this is ; " as if they could 
 not help thinking it ludicrously strange that 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 259 
 
 any one should be talking of God, of the Saviour 
 of mankind, of the facts of the Bible, the welfare 
 of the soul, the shortness and value of life, and 
 a future account, when he might be talking of 
 the neighbouring fair, past or expected, or the 
 local quarrels, or the last laughable incident 
 or adventure of the hamlet. It is particularly 
 observable, that grossly ignorant persons are 
 very apt to take a ludicrous impression from 
 high and solemn subjects ; at least when intro- 
 duced in any other time or way than in the 
 ceremonial of public religious service ; when 
 brought forward as a personal concern, de- 
 manding consideration every where, and which 
 may be urged by individual on individual. You 
 have commonly enough seen this provoke the 
 grin of stupidity and folly. And if you asked 
 yourselves, (for it were in vain to ask theniy) 
 why it produced this so perverse effect, you had 
 only to consider that, to minds abandoned 
 through ignorance to be totally engrossed by 
 the immediate objects of sense, the grave as- 
 sumption, and emphatic enforcement, of the 
 transcendent importance of a wholly unseen 
 and spiritual economy, has much the appear- 
 ance and effect of a great lie attempted to be 
 passed upon them. You might indeed recollect 
 also, that the most which some of them are 
 likely to have learnt about religion-, is the cir- 
 cumstance, that the persons professing to make 
 it an earnest concern are actually regarded as 
 
 s 2 
 
260 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 fit objects of derision by multitudes, not of the 
 vulgar order only, but including many of the 
 wealthy, the genteel, the magisterial, and the 
 dignified in point of rank. 
 
 Individuals of the most ignorant class may 
 stroll into a place of worship, bearing their 
 character so conspicuously in their appearance 
 and manner as to draw the particular notice 
 of the preacher, while addressing the congrega- 
 tion. It may be, that having taken their stare 
 round the place, they go out, just, it may 
 happen, when he is in the midst of a marked, 
 prominent, and even picturesque illustration, 
 perhaps from some of the striking facts or cha- 
 racters of the scripture history, which had not 
 made the slightest ingress on their thoughts 
 or imagination. Or they are pleased to stay 
 through the service; during which his eye is 
 frequently led to where several of them may 
 be seated together. Without an appearance 
 of addressing them personally, he shall be ex- 
 cited to direct a special effort toward what he 
 surmises to be the state of their minds. He 
 may in this effort acquire an additional force, 
 emphasis, and pointedness of delivery; but espe- 
 cially his utmost mental force shall be brought 
 into action to strike upon their faculties with 
 vivid rousing ideas, plainly and briefly expressed. 
 And he fancies, perhaps, that he has at least 
 arrested their attention ; that what is going 
 from his mind is in some manner or other 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 261 
 
 taking a place in theirs ; when some inexpress- 
 ibly trivial occurring circumstance shews him, 
 that the hold he has on them is not of the 
 strength of a spider's web. Those thoughts* 
 those intellects, those souls, are instantly and 
 wholly gone — from a representation of one of 
 the awful visitations of divine judgment in the 
 ancient world — a description of sublime angelic 
 agency, as in some recorded fact in the Bible — 
 an illustration of the discourse, miracles, or 
 expiatory sorrows of the Redeemer of the world 
 — a strong appeal to conscience on past sin — 
 a statement, perhaps in the form of example, 
 of an important duty in given circumstances — 
 a cogent enforcement of some specific point 
 as of most essential moment in respect to 
 eternal safety ; — from the attempted grasp, or 
 supposed seizure, of any such subject, these 
 rational spirits started away, with infinite faci- 
 lity, to the movements occasioned by the falling 
 of a hat from a peg. 
 
 By the time that any semblance of attention 
 returns, the preacher's address may have taken 
 the form of pointed interrogation, with very 
 defined supposed facts, or even real ones, to 
 give the question and its principle as it were a 
 tangible substance. Well ; just at the moment 
 when his questions converged to a point, which 
 was to have been a dart of conviction striking 
 the understanding, and compelling the common 
 sense and conscience of the auditors to answer 
 
262 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 for themselves, — at that moment, he perceives 
 two or three of the persons he had particularly 
 in view begin an active whispering, prolonged 
 with the accompaniment of the appropriate 
 vulgar smiles. They may possibly relapse at 
 length, through sheer dulness, into tolerable 
 decorum ; and the instructor, not quite losing 
 sight of them, tries yet again to impel some 
 serious ideas through the obtuseness of their 
 mental being. But he can clearly perceive, 
 after the animal spirits have thus been a little 
 quieted by the necessity of sitting still awhile, 
 the signs of a stupid vacancy, which is hardly 
 sensible that any thing is actually saying, and 
 probably makes, in the case of some of the indi- 
 viduals, what is mentally but a slight transition 
 to yawning and sleep. 
 
 Utter ignorance is a most effectual fortifica- 
 tion to a bad state of the mind. Prejudice 
 may perhaps be removed ; unbelief may be 
 reasoned with ; even demoniacs have been 
 compelled to bear witness to the truth ; but 
 the stupidity of confirmed ignorance not only 
 defeats the ultimate efficacy of the means for 
 making men wiser and better, but stands in 
 preliminary defiance to the very act of their 
 application. It reminds us of an account, in 
 one of the relations of the French Egyptian 
 campaigns, of the attempt to reduce a garrison 
 posted in a bulky fort of mud. Had the de- 
 fences been of timber, the besiegers might have 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 263 
 
 burnt them ; had they been of stone, they 
 might have shaken and ultimately bi^eached 
 them by the incessant battery of their cannon ; 
 or they might have undermined and blqwn them 
 up. But the huge mound of mud had nothing 
 susceptible of fire or any other force ; the mis- 
 siles from the artillery were discharged but to 
 be buried in the dull mass ; and all the means 
 of demolition were baffled. 
 
 The most melancholy of the exemplifications 
 of the effect of ignorance, as constituting an 
 incapacity for receiving religious instruction, 
 have been presented to those who have visited 
 persons thus devoid of knowledge in sickness 
 and the approach to death. Supposing them 
 to manifest alarm and solicitude, it is deplorable 
 to see how powerless their understandings are, 
 for any distinct conception of what, or why, it 
 is that they fear, or regret, or desire. The 
 objects of their apprehension come round them 
 as vague forms of darkness, instead of distinctly 
 exhibited dangers and foes, which they might 
 steadily contemplate, and think how to escape 
 or encounter. And how little does the bene- 
 volent instructor find it possible for him to do, 
 when he applies his mind to the painful task 
 of reducing this gloomy confused vision to the 
 plain defined truth of their unhappy situation, 
 set in order before their eyes. 
 
 He deems it necessary to speak of the most 
 
264 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 elementary principles — the perfect holiness and 
 justice ^of God — the corresponding holiness, and 
 the all-comprehending extent, of his law, ap- 
 pointed to his creatures — the absolute duty of 
 conformity to it in every act, word, and thought 
 — the necessary condemnation consequent on 
 failure — the dreadful evil, therefore, of sin, both 
 in its principle and consequences. God — per- 
 fect holiness — justice — law — universal confor- 
 mity — sin — condemnation ! Alas ! the hapless 
 auditor has no such sense of the force of terms, 
 and no such analogical ideas, as to furnish the 
 medium for conveying these representations to 
 his understanding. He never had, at any 
 time ; and now there may be in his mind all the 
 additional confusion, and incapacity of fixed 
 attention, arising from pain, debility, and sleep- 
 lessness. All this therefore passes before him 
 with a tenebrious glimmer ; like lightning faintly 
 penetrating to a man behind a thick black 
 curtain. 
 
 The instructor attempts a personal apphcation, 
 endeavouring to give the disturbed conscience 
 a rational direction, and a distinct cognisance. 
 But he finds, as he might expect to find, that a 
 conscience without knowledge has never taken 
 but a very small portion of the man's habits of 
 life under its jurisdiction ; and that it is a most 
 hopeless thing to attempt to send it back rein- 
 forced, to reclaim and conquer, through all the 
 past, the whole extent of its rightful but never 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 265 
 
 assumed dominion. So feeble and confined in 
 the function of judgment through which it must 
 see and act, it is especially incapable of admit- 
 ting the monitor's estimate of the measure of 
 guilt involved in omission, and in an irreligious 
 state of the mind, as an exceedingly grave addi- 
 tion to the account of criminal action. The 
 man is totally and honestly unable to conceive 
 of substantial guilt in any thing of which he 
 can ask, what injury it has done to any body. 
 This single point — whether positive harm has 
 been done to any one, — comprehends the whole 
 essence and sum of the conscious accountable- 
 ness of very ignorant people. Material wrong, 
 very material wrong, to their fellow mortals, 
 they have a conscience that they should not do; 
 a conscience, however, which they would deem 
 it hard to be obliged to maintain quite entire 
 even to this confined extent ; and which there- 
 fore admits some compromise and gives some 
 license, with respect to any kind of wrong which 
 may have been commonly practised, upon a 
 kind of understanding that in certain cases men 
 may a little set principle aside, and each one 
 must take the best care he can of himself. At 
 this confine, itself so undecidedly marked, these 
 very ignorant persons lose the sense of obliga- 
 tion, and feel absolved from any further juris- 
 diction. So coarse and narrow a conscience as 
 to what they do, is not likely to be refined and 
 extended into a cognisance of what they are. 
 
266 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 As for a duty absolute in the nature of things, 
 or a duty as owing to themselves, in respect to 
 their own nature, or a duty as imposed by the 
 Almighty, — that their minds should he in a certain 
 prescribed state, — there does really require a 
 perfectly new manner of the action of intellect 
 to enable them to apprehend its existence. And 
 this habitual insensibility to any jurisdiction over 
 their internal state, now meets, in its conse- 
 quences, the supposed instructor. In consi- 
 deration of the vast importance of this part of a 
 rational creature's accountableness, and partly, 
 too, from a desire to avoid the invidiousness of 
 appearing as a judicial censor of the sick man's 
 practical conduct, he insists in an especial man- 
 ner on this subject of the state within, endea- 
 vouring to expose that dark world by the light 
 of religion to the sick man's conscience. But 
 to give in an hour the understanding which it 
 requires the discipline of many years to render 
 competent ! How vain the attempt ! The man's 
 sense of guilt fixes almost exclusively on some- 
 thing that has been improper in his practical 
 courses. He professes to acknowledge the evil 
 of this; and perhaps with a certain stress of 
 expression ; intended, by an apparent respond- 
 ence to the serious emphasis which the monitor 
 is laying on another part of the accountableness 
 and guilt, to take him off from thus endeavour- 
 ing, as it appears to the ignorant sufferer, to 
 make him more of a sinner than there is any 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 267 
 
 reason. By continuing to press the subject, the 
 instructor may find himself in danger of being 
 regarded as having taken upon him the unkind 
 office of accuser^in his own name, and of his 
 own will and authority. 
 
 When inculcating the necessity of repentance, 
 he will perceive the indistinctness of appre- 
 hension of the difference between the horror 
 of sin merely from dread of impending conse- 
 quences, and an antipathy to its essential nature. 
 And even if this distinction, which admits of easy 
 forms of exemplification, should thus be rendered 
 in a degree intelligible, the man cannot make the 
 application. The instructor observes, as one of 
 the most striking results of a want of disci- 
 plined mental exercise, an utter inability for self- 
 inspection. There is before his eyes, looking at 
 him, but a stranger to himself, a man on whose 
 mind no other minds, except One, can shed a 
 light of self-manifestation, to save him from the 
 most fatal mistakes. 
 
 If the monitor would turn, (rather from an 
 impulse to relieve the gloom of the scene, than 
 from any thing he sees of a hopeful approach 
 toward a right apprehension of the austerer 
 truths of religion,) if he would turn his efforts, 
 to the effect of directing on this dark spirit the 
 benign rays of the christian redemption, what is 
 he to do for terms, — yes, for very terms? Medi- 
 ator, sacrifice, atonement, satisfaction; faith, 
 reliance ; even the expression believing in Christ; 
 
268 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 merit of the death of Christ, acquittal, accept- 
 ance, justification : — he knows, or will soon find, 
 that he is talking the language of an occult 
 science. And he is forced down to such expe- 
 dients of grovelling paraphrase, and humiliating 
 analogy, that he becomes conscious that his 
 method of endeavouring to make a divine subject 
 comprehensible, is to divest it of its dignity, and 
 reduce it, in order that it may not confound, 
 to the rank of things which have not majesty 
 enough to impress with awe. And after this 
 has been done, to the utmost of his ability, and 
 to the unavoidable weariness of his suffering 
 auditor, he is distressed to think of the propor- 
 tion between the insignificance of any ideas 
 which this man's mind now possesses of the 
 economy of redemption, and the magnitude of 
 the interest in which he stands dependent on it. 
 A symptom or assurance which should impart 
 to the sick man a confidence of his recovery, 
 would appear to him a far greater good than all 
 that he can comprehend as offered to him from 
 the Physician of the soul. Some crude senti- 
 ment, as, that he " hopes Jesus Christ will 
 stand his friend ; " that it was very good of the 
 Saviour to think of us ; that he wishes he knew 
 what to do to get his help ; that Jesus Christ 
 has done him good in other things, and he hopes 
 he will now again at the last;* — such expres- 
 
 * Such an expression as this would hardly have occurred 
 but from recollection of fact, in the instance of an aged farmer, 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 269 
 
 sions will afford little to alleviate the gloomy 
 feelings, with which the serious visiter descends 
 from the chamber in which, perhaps, he may 
 hear, a few days after, that the man he con- 
 versed with lies a dead body. 
 
 But such benevolent visiters have to tell of 
 still more melancholy exemplifications of the 
 effects of ignorance in the close of life. They 
 have seen the neglect of early cultivation, and 
 the subsequent estrangement from all know- 
 ledge and thinking, except about business and 
 folly, result in such a stupefaction of mind, that 
 irreligious and immoral persons, expecting no 
 more than a few days of life, and not in a state 
 of physical lethargy, were absolutely incapable 
 of being alarmed at the near approach of death. 
 They might not deny, nor in the infidel sense 
 disbelieve, what was said to them of the awful- 
 ness of that event and its consequences ; but 
 they had actually never thought enough of death 
 to have any solemn associations with the idea. 
 And their faculties were become so rigid, so 
 stiffened, as it were, that they could not now 
 acquire them ; no, not while the portentous 
 spectre was unveiling his visage to them, in near 
 and still nearer approach ; not when the element 
 
 (the owner of the farm,) in his last illness. In the way of 
 reassuring his somewhat doubtful hope that Christ would not 
 fail him when now had recourse to, at his extreme need, he 
 said, (to the writer,) " Jesus Christ has sent me a deal of 
 good crops." 
 
270 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of another world was beginning to penetrate 
 through the rents of their mortal tabernacle. 
 It appeared that literally their thoughts could 
 not go out from what they had been through 
 life immersed in, to contemplate, with any 
 realizing feeling, a grand change of being, ex- 
 pected so soon to come on them. They could 
 not go to the fearful brink to look off. It was a 
 stupor of the soul not to be awaked but by the 
 actual plunge into the realities of eternity. In 
 siich a case, the instinctive repugnance to death 
 might be visible and acknowledged. But the 
 feeling was. If it must be so, there is no help for 
 it; and as to what may come after, we must 
 take our chance. In this temper and manner, 
 we recollect a sick man, of this untaught class, 
 answering the inquiry how he felt himself, 
 *' Getting worse ; I suppose I shall make a die 
 of it." And some pious neighbours, earnestly 
 exhorting him to solemn concern and prepara- 
 tion, could not make him understand, we repeat 
 with emphasis, understand, why there was occa- 
 sion for any extraordinary disturbance of mind. 
 Yet this man was not inferior to those around 
 him in sense for the common business of life. 
 
 After a tedious length of suffering, and when 
 death is plainly inevitable, it is not very un- 
 common for persons under this infatuation to 
 express a wish for its arrival, simply as a deli- 
 verance from what they are enduring, without 
 disturbing themselves with a thought of what 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 271 
 
 may follow. '' I hope it will please God soon 
 to release me/' was the expression to his reli- 
 gious medical attendant, of such an ignorant 
 and insensible mortal, within an hour of his 
 death, which was evidently and directly brought 
 on by his vices. And he uttered it without a 
 word, or the smallest indicated emotion, of 
 penitence or solicitude ; though he had passed 
 his life in a neighbourhood abounding with 
 the public means of religious instruction and 
 warning. 
 
 When earnest, persisting, and seriously me- 
 nacing admonitions, of pious visiters or friends, 
 almost literally compel such unhappy persons to 
 some precise recognition of the subject, their 
 answers will often be faithfully representative, 
 and a consistent completion, of their course 
 through mental darkness, from childhood to the 
 mortal hour. We recollect the instance of a 
 wicked old man, who, within that very hour, 
 replied to the urgent admonitions by which a 
 religious neighbour felt it a painful duty to make 
 a last effort to alarm him, '' What, do you be- 
 lieve that God can think of damning me because 
 I may have been as bad as other folk? I am 
 sure he will do no such thing : he is far too 
 good for that." 
 
 We cannot close this detailed illustration of 
 so gloomy a subject, without again adverting to 
 a phenomenon as admirable as, unhappily, it is 
 rare ; and for which the observers, who cannot 
 
272 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 endure mystery in religion, or religion itself, 
 may go, if they choose, round the whole circle 
 of their philosophy, and begin again, to find 
 any adequate cause, other than the most imme- 
 diate agency of the Almighty Spirit. Here and 
 there an instance occurs, to the dehght of the 
 christian philanthropist, of a person brought up 
 in utter ignorance and barbarian rudeness, and 
 so continuing till late in life ; and then, at last, 
 after such a length of time and habit has com- 
 pleted its petrifying eflfect, suddenly seized upon 
 b)i a mysterious power, and taken, with an 
 alarming and irresistible force, out of the dark 
 hold in which the spirit has lain imprisoned 
 and torpid, into the sphere of thought and 
 feeling. 
 
 Occasion is taken this once more of adverting 
 to such facts, not so much for the purpose of 
 magnifying the nature, as of simply exhibiting 
 the effect, of an influence that can breathe with 
 such power on the obtuse intellectual faculties ; 
 which it appears, in the most signal of these 
 instances, almost to create anew. It is exceed- 
 ingly striking to observe how the contracted 
 rigid soul seems to soften, and grow warm, and 
 expand, and quiver with life. With the new 
 energy infused, it painfully struggles to work 
 itself into freedom, from, the wretched contor- 
 tion in which it has so long been fixed as by 
 the impressed spell of some infernal magic. It 
 is seen filled with a distressed and indignant 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 273 
 
 emotion at its own ignorance ; actuated with a 
 restless earnestness to be informed; acquiring 
 an unwonted pliancy of its faculties to thought ; 
 attaining a perception, combined of intelligence 
 and moral sensibility, to which numerous things 
 are becoming discernible and affecting, that 
 were as non-existent before. It is not in the 
 very extreme strength of their import that we 
 employ such terms of description ; the malice 
 of irreligion may easily parody them into poetical 
 excess ; but we have known instances in which 
 the change, the intellectual change, has been so 
 conspicuous, within a bj«ief space of time, that 
 even an infidel observer must have forfeited all 
 claim to be esteemed a man of sense, if he would 
 not acknowledge, — This that you call divine 
 grace, whatever it may really be, is the strangest 
 awakener of faculties after all. And to a devout 
 man, it is a spectacle of most enchanting beauty, 
 thus to see the immortal plant, which has been 
 under a malignant blast while sixty or seventy 
 years have passed over it, coming out at length 
 in the bloom of life. 
 
 We cannot hesitate to draw the inference, 
 that if religion is so auspicious to the intel- 
 lectual faculties, the cultivation and exercise 
 of those faculties must be of great advantage to 
 religion. 
 
 These observations on ignorance, considered 
 as an incapacitation for receiving religious in- 
 struction, are pointed chiefly at that portion of 
 
 T 
 
274 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the people, unhappily so far the largest, who are 
 little disposed to attend to that kind of instruc- 
 tion. But we should notice its prejudicial effect 
 on those of them to whom religion has become 
 a matter of serious and inquisitive concern. 
 The preceding assertions of the efficacy of a 
 strong religious interest to excite and enlarge 
 the intellectual faculty will not be contradicted 
 by observing, nevertheless, that in a dark and 
 crude state of that faculty those well-disposed 
 persons, especially if of a warm temperament 
 withal, are unfortunately liable to receive delu- 
 sive impressions and absurd notions, blended 
 with religious doctrine and sentiment. It would 
 be no less than plain miracle or inspiration, a 
 more entire and specific superseding of ordinary 
 laws than that which we have just been deno- 
 minating " an immediate agency of the Almighty 
 Spirit," if a mind left uncultivated all up through 
 the earlier age, and perhaps far on in life, should 
 not be weak in judgment and dull for discrimi- 
 nation, on coming to be employed on the most 
 important subjects. The situation reminds us 
 of the story of a tribe of Indians denominated 
 " moon-eyed," who, not being able to look at 
 things by the light of the sun, were reduced to 
 look at them under the glimmering of the moon, 
 by which light it is an inevitable circumstance 
 of human vision to receive the images of things 
 in perverted and deceptive forms. 
 
 Even in such an extremely rare instance as 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 275 
 
 that above described, an example of the super- 
 lative degree of the animating and invigorating 
 influence of religion on the uncultivated facul- 
 ties, there would be visible some of the unfor- 
 tunate consequences of the inveterate ignorance 
 and torpor; a tendency, perhaps, to magnify 
 some one thing beyond its proportionate impor- 
 tance ; to adopt hasty conclusions ; to entertain 
 some questionable or erroneous principle from 
 its specious resemblance to truth ; to make too 
 much account of variable and transitory feehngs, 
 or to carry zeal beyond the limits of discretion. 
 In examples of a lower order of the correction 
 or reversal of the effects of ignorance by the 
 influence of religion, the remains of those mis- 
 chievous effects will be still more palpable. So 
 that, while it is an unquestionable and gratifying 
 fact, that among the uneducated subjects of 
 genuine religion many are remarkably improved 
 in the power and exercise of their reason ; and 
 while we may assume that some share of this 
 improvement reaches to all who are really under 
 this most beneficent influence in the creation,* 
 
 * Really under this influence, we repeat, pointedly ; for 
 we justly put all others out of the account. It is nothing (as 
 against this asserted influence on the intelligent faculty) that 
 great numbers who may contribute to swell a public bustle 
 about religion ; who may run together at the call of whim, 
 imposture, or insanity, assuming that name ; who may ac- 
 quire, instead of any other folly, a turn for talking, disputing, 
 or ranting, about that subject; it is nothing, in short, that 
 any who are not in real, conscientious seriousness the disciples 
 
276 ON POPULAR IGxNORANCE. 
 
 it still is to be acknowledged of too many, who 
 are in a measure, we may candidly believe, under 
 the genuine efficacy of religion, that they have 
 attained, through its influence, but so inferior a 
 proportion of the improvement of intellect, that 
 they can be well pleased with a great deal of 
 absurdity of religious notions and language. But 
 while we confess and regret that it is so, we 
 should not overlook the causes and excuses that 
 may be found for it, in unfortunate superaddition 
 to their lack of education ; partly in the constitu- 
 tion of the mind, partly in extraneous circum- 
 stances. Many whose attention is in honest 
 earnestness drawn to religion, are naturally 
 endowed wdth so scanty an allotment of the 
 thinking power, strictly so denominated, that it 
 would have required high cultivation to raise 
 them to the level of very moderate understanding. 
 There are some who appear to have a natural 
 invincible tendency to an uncouth fantastic mode 
 of forming their notions. It is in the nature of 
 others, that whatever cultivation they might 
 have received, it would still have been by their 
 passions, rather than, in any due proportion, by 
 their reason, that an important concern would 
 have taken and retained hold of them. It may 
 have happened to not a few, that circumstances 
 unfavourable to the understanding were con- 
 nected with the causes or occasions of their first 
 
 of religion, can be shown to be no better for it, in point of 
 improved understanding. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 277 
 
 effectual religious impressions. Some perverse 
 cast in the exposition of the christian faith, not 
 essentially vitiating, but very much distorting 
 and cramping it, or some peculiarity or narrow- 
 mindedness of the teachers, may have conveyed 
 their effect, to enter, as it were, at the door at 
 the same moment that it was opened by the 
 force of a solemn conviction, and to be retained 
 and cherished ever after on the strength of this 
 association. This may have tended to give an 
 obliquity to the disciple's understanding, or to 
 arrest and dwarf its growth ; to fix it in preju- 
 dices instead of training it to judgments ; or to 
 dispense with its exercise by merging it in a kind 
 of quietism ; so that the proper tendency of reli- 
 gion to excite intellectual activity was overruled 
 and frustrated. It is most unfortunate that thus 
 there may be, from things directly associated 
 with a man's piety, an influence operating to 
 disable his understanding ; as if there had been 
 mixed with the incense of a devout service in 
 the temple, a soporific ingredient which had ir- 
 resistibly the effect of closing the worshipper's 
 eyes in slumber. 
 
 Now suppose all these worthy persons, with 
 so many things of a special kind against them, 
 to be also under the one great calamity of a 
 neglected education, and is it any wonder that 
 they can admit religious truths in shapes very 
 strange and faintly enlightened ; that they have 
 an uncertain and capricious test of what is 
 
278 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 genuine, and not much vigilance to challenge 
 plausible semblances ; that they should be caught 
 by the exhibition in some quaint form of a truth 
 which would be of too intellectual a substance as 
 presented in its pure simplicity ; and should be 
 ready to receive with approbation not a little of 
 what is a heavy disgrace to the name of religious 
 doctrine and ministration ? Where is the won- 
 der that crudeness, incoherence, and inconsist- 
 ency of notions, should not disappoint and offend 
 minds that have not, ten times since they came 
 into the world, been compelled to form two ideas 
 with precision and then compare them discrimi- 
 nately or combine them strictly, on any subject 
 beyond the narrow scope of their ordinary pur- 
 suits ? Where is the wonder, if many such 
 persons take noise and fustian for a glowing zeal 
 and a lofty elevation ; if they mistake a wheed- 
 ling cant for affectionate solicitude ; if they defer 
 to pompous egotism and dogmatical assertion, 
 from the obvious interest which those who cannot 
 inquire much for themselves have to believe 
 their teacher is an oracle ; if they are delighted 
 with whimsical conceits as strokes of discovery 
 and surprise, and yet at the same time are 
 pleased with common-place, and endless repeti- 
 tion, as an exemption from mental effort ; and 
 if they are gratified by vulgarity of diction and 
 illustration, as bringing religion to the level 
 where they are at home ? Nay, if an artful pre- 
 tender, or half-lunatic visionary, or some poor 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 279 
 
 set of dupes of their own inflated self-importance, 
 should give out that they are come into the 
 world for the manifestation, at last, of true 
 Christianity, which the divine revelation has 
 failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the 
 numberless devout and sagacious examiners of 
 it, — what is there in the minds of the most igno- 
 rant class of persons desirous to secure the 
 benefits of religion, that can be securely relied on 
 to certify them, that they shall not forego the 
 greatest blessing ever offered to them by setting 
 at nought these pretensions ? 
 
 It is grievous to think there should be an 
 active extensive currency of a language convey- 
 ing crudities, extravagances, arrogant dictates of 
 ignorance, pompous nothings, vulgarities, catches 
 of idle fantasy, and impertinences of the speaker's 
 vanity, as religious instruction, to assemblages 
 of ignorant people. But then for the means of 
 depreciating it, so as to drive it at last out of cir- 
 culation ? The thing to be wished is, that it were 
 possible to put some strong coercion on the 
 minds (we deprecate all other restraint) of the 
 teachers ; a compulsion to feel the necessity of 
 information, sound sense, disciplined thinking, 
 the correct use of words, and an honest careful 
 purpose to make the people wiser. There are 
 signs of amendment, certainly ; but while the 
 passion of human beings for notoriety lasts, 
 (which will be yet some time,) there will not fail 
 to be men, in any miraber required, ready to 
 
280 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 exhibit in religion, in any manner in which the 
 people are willing to be pleased with them. The 
 effectual method will be, to take the matter in 
 the inverted order, and endeavour to secure that 
 those who assemble to be taught, shall already 
 have learnt so much, bij other means, that no 
 professed teacher shall feel at liberty to treat 
 them as an unknowing herd. But by what other 
 means, except the discipline of the best educa- 
 tion possible to be given to them, and the subse- 
 quent voluntary self-improvement to w^hich it 
 may be hoped that such an education would often 
 lead ? 
 
 We cannot dismiss this topic, of the unhappy 
 effect of extreme ignorance on persons religiously 
 disposed, in rendering them both liable and 
 inclined to receive their ideas of the highest 
 subject in a disorderly, perverted, and debased 
 form, mixed largely with other men's folly and 
 their own, without noticing with pleasure an 
 additional testimony to the connexion between 
 genuine religion and intelligence. It arises 
 from the fact, apparent to any discriminating 
 observer, that, as a general rule, the most truly 
 pious of the illiterate disciples of religion, those 
 who have the most of its devotional feeling, do 
 certainly manifest more of the operation of judg- 
 ment in their religion than is evinced by those 
 of less solemn and devout sentiment. The 
 former will unquestionably be found, when on 
 the same level as to the measure of natural 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 281 
 
 faculty and the want of previous cultivation, to 
 shov^ more discernment, to be less captivated by 
 noise and extravagance, and more intent on 
 obtaining a clear comprehension of that faith, 
 which they feel it is but a reasonable obligation 
 that they should endeavour to understand, if 
 they are to repose upon it their most important 
 hopes. 
 
 ^ 
 
SECTION VI. 
 
 Supposed method of verifying the preceding representation of the igno- 
 rance of the people. — Renewed expressions of wonder and mortifica- 
 tion that this should be the true description of the English nation. — 
 Prodigious exertions of this nation for the accomplishment of objects 
 foreign to the improvement of the people. — Effects which might have 
 resulted from far less exertion and resource applied to that object — 
 The contrast between what has been done, and what might have been 
 done by the exertion of the national strength, exposed in a series of 
 parallel representations. — Total unconcern, till a recent period, of the 
 generality of persons in the higher classes, respecting the mental state 
 of the populace. — Indications of an important change in the manner 
 of estimating them. — Measures attempted and projected for their 
 improvement. — Some of these measures and methods insignificant in 
 the esteem of projectors of merely political schemes for the amendment 
 of the popular condition. — But questions to those projectors on the 
 efficacy of such schemes. — Most desirable, nevertheless, that the 
 political systems and the governing powers of states could be converted 
 to promote so grand a purpose. — But expostulations addressed to those 
 who, desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object itself. — 
 Incitement to individual exertion. — Reference to the sublimest Ex- 
 ample. — Imputation of extravagant hope. — Repelled ; -first, by a full 
 acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of 
 improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the 
 essential constitution of our nature ; and next, by a plain statement, in 
 a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to 
 expect from a general extension of good education. — Answer to the 
 question, whether it be presumed that any merely human discipline can 
 reduce its subjects under the predominance of religion. — Answer to the 
 inquiry, what is the extent of the knowledge of which it is desired to 
 put the common people in possession. — Observations on supposed 
 degrees of possible advancement of the knowledge and welfare of the 
 community ; with reflections of astonishment and regret at the actual 
 state of ignorance, degradation, and wretchedness, after so many 
 thousand years have passed away. — Congratulatory notice of those 
 worthy individuals who have been rescued from the consequences of a 
 neglected education by their own resolute mental exertions. 
 
 Thus it has been attempted, we fear with too 
 much prohxity and repetition, to describe the 
 evils attendant on a neglected state of the minds 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 283 
 
 of the people. The representation does not 
 comprehend all those even of magnitude and 
 prominence; but it displays that portion of 
 them which is the most serious and calamitous, 
 as being the effect which the people's ignorance 
 has on their moral and religious interests. And 
 we think no one who has attentively surveyed 
 the state and character of the lower orders of 
 the community, in this country, will impute 
 exaggeration to the picture. It is rather to be 
 feared that the reality is of still darker shade ; 
 and that a more strikingly gloomy exhibition 
 might be formed, by such a process as the fol- 
 lowing: — That a certain number of the most 
 observant of the philanthropic persons, who 
 have had most intercourse with the classes in 
 question, for the purposes of instruction, chari- 
 table aid, or perhaps of furnishing employment, 
 should relate the most characteristic circum- 
 stances and anecdotes within their own expe- 
 rience, illustrative of this mental and moral 
 condition ; and that these should be arranged, 
 without any comment, under the respective heads 
 of the preceding sketch, or of a more compre- 
 hensive enumeration. Each of them might 
 repeat, in so many words, the most notable 
 things he has heard uttered as disclosing the 
 notions entertained of Deity, or any part of 
 religion; or those which have been formed of 
 the ground and extent of duty and accounta- 
 bleness ; or the imaginations respecting the 
 
284 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 termination of life^ and a future retribution. 
 They might relate the judgments they have 
 heard pronounced on characters and particular 
 modes of conduct ; on important events in the 
 world ; on any thing, in short, which may afford 
 a test of the correctness and compass of uncul- 
 tivated thought. Let the recital include both 
 the expressions of individual conception, and 
 those of the most current maxims and common- 
 places ; and let them be the sayings of persons 
 in health, and of those languishing and dying. 
 Then let there be produced a numerous assort- 
 ment of characteristic samples of practical con- 
 duct ; conduct not simply proceeding, in a 
 general way, from wrong disposition, but bear- 
 ing the special marks of the cast and direction 
 given to that disposition by extreme ignorance. 
 The assemblage of things thus recounted, when 
 the actual circumstances were also added of the 
 wretchedness corresponding and inseparable, 
 would constitute such an exhibition of fact, as 
 any description of those evils in general terms 
 would incur the charge of rhetorical excess in 
 attempting to rival. We can well imagine, that 
 some of these persons, of large experience, may 
 have accompanied us through the foregoing 
 series of illustrations, with a feeling, that they 
 could have displayed the subject with a far more 
 striking prominence. 
 
 And now again the grievous reflection comes 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 285 
 
 upon US, that all this is the description of the 
 major part of the people of our own nation. 
 Of this nation, the theme of so many lofty 
 strains of panegyric ; of this nation, stretching 
 forth its powers in ambitious enterprise, with 
 infinite pride and cost, to all parts of the globe ; 
 — just as if a family were seen eagerly intent on 
 making some new appropriation, or going out to 
 maintain some competition or feud with its 
 neighbours, or mixing perhaps in the strife of 
 athletic games, or drunken frays, at the very 
 time that several of its members are lying dead 
 in the house. So that the fame of the nation 
 resounded, and its power made itself felt, in 
 every clime, it was not worth a consideration 
 that a vast proportion of its people were syste- 
 matically consigned, through ignorance and the 
 irreligion and depravity inseparable from it, 
 to wretchedness and even final perdition. It 
 is matter for never-ending amazement, that 
 during one generation after another, the pre- 
 siding wisdom in this chief of Christian and 
 Protestant States, should have thrown out the 
 hving strength of that state into almost every 
 mode of agency under heaven, rather than that 
 of promoting the state itself to the condition of 
 a happy community of cultivated beings. What 
 stupendous infatuation, what disastrous ascen- 
 dency of the Power of Darkness, that this 
 energy should have been sent forth to pervade 
 all parts of the world in quest of objects, to 
 
286 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 inspirit and accomplish innumerable projects, 
 political and military, and to lavish itself, even 
 to exhaustion and fainting at its vital source, 
 on every ahen interest ; while here, at home, so 
 large a part of the social body was in a moral 
 and intellectual sense dying and putrefying over 
 the land. And it was thus perishing for want 
 of the vivifying principle of knowledge, which 
 one fifth part of this mighty amount of exertion 
 would have been sufficient to diffuse into every 
 comer and cottage of the island. Within its 
 circuit, a countless multitude were seen passing 
 away their mortal existence little better, in any 
 view, than mere sentient shapes of matter, and 
 by their depravity inexpressibly worse ; and yet 
 this hideous fact had not the weight of the 
 very dust of the balance, in the deliberation 
 whether a grand exertion of the national vigour 
 and resource could have any object so worthy, 
 (with God for the Judge,) as some scheme of 
 foreign aggrandizement, some interference in 
 remote quarrels, an avengement, by anticipation, 
 of wrongs pretended to be foreseen, or the ob- 
 stinate prosecution of some fatal career, begun 
 in the very levity of pride, by a decision in 
 which some perverse individual or party in 
 ascendency had the influence to obtain a cor- 
 rupt or deluded concurrence. 
 
 The national honour, perhaps, would be 
 alleged, in a certain matter of punctilio, for 
 the necessity of undertakings of incalculable 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 287 
 
 consumption, by men- who could see no na- 
 tional disgrace in the circumstance that several 
 millions of the persons composing the nation 
 could not read the ten commandments. Or the 
 national safety has been pleaded to a similar 
 purpose, with a rant or a gravity of patriotic 
 phrases, upon the appearance of some slight 
 threatening symptoms ; and the wise men so 
 pleading, would have scouted as the very mad- 
 ness of fanaticism any dissuasion that should 
 have advised, — " Do you, instead, apply your 
 best efforts, and the nation's means, to raise the 
 barbarous population from their ignorance and 
 debasement, and you really may venture some 
 little trust in Divine Providence for the nation's 
 safety meanwhile." 
 
 If a contemplative and religious man, looking 
 back through little more than a century, were 
 enabled to take, with an adequate comprehen- 
 sion of intellect, the sum and value of so much 
 of the astonishing course of the national exer- 
 tions of this country, as the Supreme Judge has 
 put to the criminal account of pride and ambi- 
 tion ; and if he could then place in contrast 
 to the transactions on which that mighty 
 amount has been expended, a sober estimate 
 of what so much exerted vigour might have 
 accomplished for the intellectual and moral 
 exaltation of the people, it could not be without 
 an emotion of horror that he would say. Who 
 is to be accountable, who has been accountable. 
 
288 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 for this difference ? He would no longer wonder 
 at any plagues and judgments which may have 
 been inflicted on such a state. And he would 
 solemnly adjure all those, especially, who profess 
 in a peculiar manner to feel the power of the 
 Christian Religion, to beware how they impli- 
 cate themselves, by avowed or even implied 
 approbation, in what must be a matter of fearful 
 account before the highest tribunal. If some 
 such persons, of great merit and influence, 
 honoured performers of valuable public services 
 in certain departments, have habitually given, in 
 a public capacity, this approbation, he would 
 urge it on their consciences, in the evening of 
 life, to consider whether, in the prospect of 
 that tribunal, they have not one duty yet to 
 perform, — to throw off* from their minds the 
 servility to party associations, to estimate as 
 Christians, about to retire from the scene, the 
 actual effects on this nation of a policy which 
 might have been nearly the same if Christianity 
 had been extinct ; and then to record a solemn, 
 recanting, final protest against a system to which 
 they have so long endeavoured to make that 
 religion itself a party. 
 
 Any reference made to such a prospect im- 
 plies, that there is attributed to those who can 
 feel its seriousness a state of mind perfectly 
 unknown to the generality of what are called 
 public men. For it is notorious that, to the 
 mere working politician, there is nothing on 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 289 
 
 earth that sounds so idly or so ludicrously as a 
 reference to a judgment elsewhere and hereafter, 
 to which the policy and transactions of states- 
 men are to be carried. If the Divine jurisdic- 
 tion would yield to contract its comprehension, 
 and retire from all the ground over which a 
 practical infidehty heedlessly disregards or deli- 
 berately rejects it, how large a province it would 
 leave free ! If it be assumed that the province 
 of national affairs is so left free, on the pretence 
 that they cannot be transacted in faithful confor- 
 mity to the christian standard, that plea is 
 reserved to be tried in the great account, when 
 the responsibihty for them shall be charged. 
 For assuredly there will be persons found, to be 
 summoned forth as accountable for that conduct 
 of states which we are contemplating. Such a 
 moral agency could not throw oiF its respon- 
 sibility into the air, to be dissipated and lost, 
 like the black smoke of forges or volcanoes. 
 This one grand thing, (the improvement of the 
 people,) left undone, while a thousand arduous 
 things have been done or strenuously endea- 
 voured, cannot be less than an awful charge 
 somewhere. And where ? — but on all who have 
 voluntarily concurred and co-operated in systems 
 and schemes, which could deliberately put such 
 a thing last? Last! nay, not even that; for 
 they have, till recently, as we have seen, thrown 
 it almost wholly out of consideration. A long 
 succession of men are gone to this audit. How 
 
 u 
 
290 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 many of those who come after them will choose 
 to proceed on the same principles, and meet the 
 same award ? 
 
 We were supposing a thoughtful man to 
 draw out to his view a parallel and contrast, 
 exhibiting, on the one side, the series of objects 
 on which, during several ages, an enormous 
 exertion of the national energy has been 
 directed ; and on the other, those improve- 
 ments of the people which might have been 
 effected by so much of that exertion as he deems 
 to have been worse than wasted. In this pro- 
 cess, he might often be inclined to single out 
 particular parts and points in the actual series, 
 to be put in special contrast over against the 
 possibilities on the opposite line. For example ; 
 there may occur to his view some inconsiderable 
 island, the haunt of pestilence, rendered produc- 
 tive by means involving the most flagrant 
 iniquity ; an iniquity which it avenges by open- 
 ing a premature grave for many of his country- 
 men, and by being a moral corrupter of the 
 rest. Such a blasted spot, nevertheless, may 
 have been one of the most material objects 
 of a widely destructive war, which has in 
 effect sunk incalculable treasure in the sea, 
 and in the sands, ditches, and fields of 
 plague-infested shores ; with a dreadful sacrifice 
 of blood, life, and all the best moral feelings 
 and habits. Its possession, perhaps, was the 
 chief prize and triumph of all the grand exer- 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 291 
 
 tion, the equivalent for all the cost, misery, and 
 crime. 
 
 Or there may occur to him the name of some 
 fortress, in a less remote region, where the 
 christian nations seem to have vied with one 
 another which of them should deposit the 
 greatest number of victims, securely kept in the 
 charge of death, to rise and testify for them, 
 at the last day, how much they have been 
 governed by the peaceful spirit of their professed 
 religion. He reads that his countrymen, con- 
 joined with others, have battled round this for- 
 tress, wasting the vicinity, but richly manuring 
 the soil with blood. They have co-operated in 
 hurling upon the abodes of thousands of inha- 
 bitants within its walls, a thunder and hghtning 
 incomparably more destructive than those of 
 nature ; and have put fire and earthquake under 
 the fortifications ; shouting, " to make the welkin 
 ring," at sight of the consequent ruin and chasm, 
 which have opened an entrance for hostile rage, 
 or compelled an immediate submission. They 
 have taken the place, — and then they have 
 surrendered it. The next year perhaps they 
 have taken it again ; to be again at last given 
 up, upon compulsion or in compromise, to the 
 very same party to which it had belonged pre- 
 viously to all this horrible commotion. The 
 operations in this local and very narrow portion 
 of the grand affray of monarchies, he may cal- 
 culate to have cost his country as much as the 
 
 u 2 
 
292 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 amount earned by the toils of the whole hfe of 
 all the inhabitants of one of its populous towns ; 
 setting aside from his view the more portentous 
 part of the account, — the carnage, the crimes, 
 and the devastation committed on the foreign 
 tract, the place of abode of people who had 
 httle interest in the contest, and no power to 
 prevent it. And why was all this ? He may 
 not be able to divest himself of the principles 
 that should rule the judgment of a moralist and 
 a christian, in order to think like a statesman ; 
 and therefore may find no better reason than 
 that, when despots would quarrel, Britain must 
 fancy itself called upon to take the occasion to 
 prove itself a great power, by bearing a high 
 hand amidst their rivalries; or must seize the 
 opportunity of revenging some trivial offence 
 of one of them ; though this should be at 
 the expense of having the scene at home 
 chequered between children learning little more 
 than how to curse, and old persons dying 
 without knowing how to put words together 
 to pray. 
 
 The question may have been, in one part ot 
 the world or another, which of two wicked indi- 
 viduals of the same family, competitors for 
 sovereign authority, should be actually invested 
 with it, they being equal in the qualifications 
 and dispositions to make the worst use of it. 
 And the decision of such a question was worthy, 
 that England should expend what remained of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 293 
 
 her depressed strength from previous -exertions 
 of it in some equally meritorious cause. 
 
 Or the supposed reviewer of our national 
 history may find, somewhere in his retrospect, 
 that a certain brook or swamp in a wilderness, 
 or a stripe of waste, or the settlement of boun- 
 daries in respect to some insignificant traffic, 
 was difficult of adjustment between jealous, 
 irritated, and mutually incursive neighbours; 
 and therefore national honour and interest 
 equally required that war should be lighted up 
 by land and sea, through several quarters of the 
 globe. Or a dissension may have arisen upon 
 the matter of some petty tax on an article of 
 commerce : an absolute will had been rashly 
 signified on the claim ; pride had committed 
 itself, and was peremptory for persisting ; and 
 the resolution was to be prosecuted through 
 a wide tempest of destruction protracted perhaps 
 many years; and only ending in the forced aban- 
 donment by the leading power concerned, of 
 infinitely more than war had been made in the 
 determination not to forego ; besides the abso- 
 lutely fathomless amount of every kind of cost 
 in this progress to final frustration. — But there 
 would be no end of recounting facts of this order. 
 
 Now the comparative estimator has to set 
 against the extended rank of such enormities the 
 forms of imagined good, which might, during the 
 ages of this retrospect, have been realized by an 
 incomparably less exhausting series of exertion. 
 
294 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 an exertion, indeed, continnally renovating its 
 own resources. Imagined good, we said; — 
 alas ! the evil stands in long and awful display 
 on the ground of history ; the hypothetical good 
 presents itself as a dream ; with this circum- 
 stance only of difference from a dream, that 
 there is resting on the conscience of beings 
 somewhere still existing, a fearful accountable- 
 ness for its not having been a reality. 
 
 For such an island, as we have supposed our 
 comparer to read of, he can, in imagination, 
 look on a space of proportional extent in any 
 part of his native country, taking a district as a 
 detached section of a general national picture. 
 And he can figure to himself the result, resplen- 
 dent upon this tract, of so much energy, there 
 beneficently expended, as that island had cost : 
 an energy, we mean equivalent in measure, while 
 put forth in the infinitely different mode of an 
 exertion, by all appropriate means, to improve 
 the reason, manners, and morals of the people. 
 What a prevalence of intelligence, what a 
 delightful civility of deportment, what repression 
 of the more gross and obtrusive forms of vice, 
 what domestic decorum, attentive education of 
 the children, appropriateness of manner and 
 readiness of apprehension in attendance on pub- 
 lic offices of religion, sense and good order in 
 assemblages for the assertion and exercise of civil 
 and political rights ! All this he can imagine as 
 the possible result. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 295 
 
 We were supposing his attention fixed awhile 
 on the recorded operations against some strongly 
 fortified place, in a region marked through every 
 part with the traces and memorials of the often 
 renewed conflicts of the christian states. And 
 we suppose him to make a collective estimate of 
 all kinds of human ability exerted around and 
 against that particular devoted place ; an esti- 
 mate which divides this off as a portion of the 
 whole immense quantity of exertion expended by 
 his country in all that region in the campaigns 
 of a war, or of a century's wars. He may then 
 again endeavour, by a rule of equivalence, to 
 conceive the same amount of exertion in quite 
 another way ; to imagine human forces equal in 
 quantity to all that putting forth of strength, 
 physical, mental, and financial, for annoyance 
 and destruction, expended instead, in the opera- 
 tion of effecting the utmost improvement which 
 they could effect, in the mental cultivation and 
 the morals of the inhabitants of one large town 
 in his own country. 
 
 In figuring to himself the channels and 
 instrumentality through which this great stream 
 of energy might have passed into this operation, 
 on a detached spot of his country, he will soon 
 have many specific means presented to his 
 view : Schools, of the most perfect appointment, 
 in every section and corner of the town ; a sys- 
 tem of friendly but cogent dealing with all the 
 people of inferior condition, relatively to the 
 
296 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 necessity of their practical accordance to the 
 plans of education;* an exceedingly copious 
 supply, for individual possession, of the best 
 books of elementary knowledge, accompanied, 
 as we need not say, by the sacred volume; a 
 number of assortments of useful and pleasing 
 books for circulation, established under strict 
 order, and with appointments of honorary and 
 other rewards to those who gave evidence of 
 having made the best use of them ; a number of 
 places of resort where various branches of the 
 most generally useful and attainable knowledge 
 an J arts should be explained and applied, by 
 every expedient of familiar, practical, and enter- 
 taining illustration, admitting a degree of co- 
 operation by those who attended to see and 
 hear ; and an abundance of commodious places 
 for religious instruction on the sabbath, where 
 there should be wise and zealous men to impart 
 it. Our speculator has a good right to suppose 
 a high degree of these qualifications in his public 
 teachers of religion, when he is to imagine a 
 parallel in this department to the skill and 
 ardour displayed in the supposed military ope- 
 rations. He may add to such an apparatus a 
 
 * It is here confidently presumed, that any man who looks, 
 in a right state of his senses, at the manner in which the 
 children are still brought up, in many parts of the land, will 
 hear with contempt any hypocritical protest against so much 
 interference with the discretion, the liberty, of parents ; — the 
 discretion, the liberty, forsooth, of bringing up their children 
 a nuisance on the face of the earth. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 297 
 
 police, (if we may employ that rather ungracious 
 term,) vigilant and peremptory against every cog- 
 nizable form of neglect and immorality. And 
 besides all this, there would be a great variety 
 of undefined and optional activity of benevolent 
 and intelligent men of local influence. 
 
 Under so auspicious a combination of disci- 
 pline, he will not indeed fancy, in his transient 
 vision, that he beholds Athens revived, with its 
 bright intelligence all converted to minister to 
 morality, religion and happiness.; but he will, in 
 sober consistency, we think, with what is known 
 of the relation of cause and effect, imagine a 
 place far surpassing any actual town or city on 
 earth. And let it be distinctly kept in view, 
 that to produce the result exhibited in this ideal 
 spectacle, he is just supposing to have been 
 expended, on the population of the town, a 
 measure of exertion and means equal, (as far as 
 agencies in so different a form and direction can 
 be brought to any rule of comparative estimate,) 
 to what has been expended by his country in in- 
 vesting, battering, undermining, burning, taking, 
 and perhaps retaking, one particular foreign 
 town, in one or several campaigns. 
 
 If he should perchance be sarcastically 
 questioned, how he can allow himself in so 
 strange a conceit as that of supposing such a 
 quantity of moral forces concentrated to act in 
 one exclusive spot, while the rest of the country 
 remained under the old course of things ; or in 
 
298 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 such an absurdity as that of fancying that any 
 quantity of those forces could effectually raise 
 one local section of the people eminently aloft, 
 while continuing surrounded and unavoidably in 
 constant intercourse with the general mass, 
 remaining still sunk in degradation — he has to 
 reply, that he is fancying no such thing. For 
 while he is thus converting, in imagination, the 
 military exertions against one foreign town, into 
 intellectual and moral operations on one town 
 at home, why may he not, in similar imagination, 
 make a whole country correspond to a whole 
 country ? He may conceive the grand, the 
 incalculable amount of exertion made by his 
 country in martial operations over all that wide 
 foreign territory of which he has selected a par- 
 ticular spot, to have been, on the contrary, 
 expended in the supposed beneficent process on 
 the great scale of this whole nation. Then 
 would the hypothetical improvement in the one 
 particular town, so far from being a strange insu- 
 lated phenomenon, absurd to be conceived as 
 existing in exception and total contrast to the 
 general state of the people, be but a specimen of 
 that state. 
 
 He may proceed along the series of such 
 confronted spectacles as far as bitter mortifica- 
 tion will let him. But he will soon be sick of 
 this process of comparison. And how sick will 
 he thenceforward be, to perpetual loathing, of 
 the vain raptures with which an immoral and 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 299 
 
 anti-christian patriotism can review a long his- 
 tory of what it will call national glory, acquired 
 hy national energy ambitiously consuming itself 
 in a continual succession and unlimited extent of 
 extraneous operations, of that kind which has 
 been the grand curse of the human race ever 
 since the time of Cain ; while the one thing 
 needful of national welfare, the very summum 
 honiim of a state, has been regarded with con- 
 temptuous indifference. 
 
 These observations are not made on an 
 assumption, that England could in all cases have 
 kept clear of implication in foreign interests, 
 and remote and sanguinary contests. But they 
 are made on the assumption of what is admitted 
 and deplored by every thoughtful religious man, 
 whose understanding and moral sense are not 
 wretchedly prostrated in homage to a prevaihng 
 system, and chained down by a superstition that 
 dares not question the wisdom and probity of 
 high national authorities and counsels. What is 
 so admitted and deplored by the true and chris- 
 tian patriots is, that this nation has gone to an 
 awfully criminal extent beyond the line of neces- 
 sity ; that it has been extremely prompt to find 
 or make occasions for appearing again, and still 
 again, in array for the old work of waste and 
 death ; and that the unequalled advantages pos- 
 sessed in this protestant country, if they had 
 been cared for or used, for teaching the prepon- 
 derating classes to look at these transactions in 
 
300 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 the light of reh'gion, have reflected a peculiar 
 aggravation on the guilt of a policy persevered in 
 from age to age in disregard of the laws of Chris- 
 tianity, and the warning of accountableness to 
 the Sovereign Judge. 
 
 These observations assume, also, that there 
 cannot be such a thing as a nation so doomed 
 to a necessity and duty of expending its vigour 
 and means in foreign enterprise, as to be habitu- 
 ally absolved from the duty of raising its people 
 from brutish ignorance. This concern is a duty 
 at all events and to an entire certainty ; is a duty 
 imperative and absolute ; and any pretended 
 necessity for such a direction of the national 
 exertion as would be, through a long succession 
 of time, incompatible with a paramount attention 
 to this, must be an imposition too gross to fur- 
 nish an excuse for being imposed on. It would 
 be a virtual denial of the superintendence of 
 Providence. It would be the same thing as to 
 assert of an individmal, that his duties of other 
 kinds are so many and great, as to render it 
 impossible for him to give a competent attention 
 to his highest interests, and that therefore he 
 stands exempted from the obligations of religion. 
 
 Such as we have described has been, for ages, 
 the degraded state of the multitude. And such 
 has been the indifference to it, manifested by 
 the superior, the refined, the ascendent portion 
 of the community; who, generally speaking. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 301 
 
 could see these sharers with them of the dis- 
 honoured human nature, in endless numbers 
 around them, in the city and the field, without 
 its ever flashing on conscience that on them was 
 lying a solemn responsibility, destined to press 
 one day with all its weight, for that ill arrange- 
 ment of the social order which abandoned these 
 beings to an exclusion from the sphere of rational 
 existence. It never occurred to many of them 
 as a question of the smallest moment, in what 
 manner the mind might be living in all these 
 bodies, if only it were there in competence to 
 make them efficient as machines and implements. 
 Contented to be gazed at, to be envied, or to be 
 regarded as too high even for envy, and to have 
 the rough business of the world performed by 
 these inhalers of the vital air, they perhaps 
 thought, if they reflected at all on the subject, 
 that the best and most privileged state of such 
 creatures was to be in the least possible degree 
 morally accountable ; and that therefore it would 
 be but doing them an injury to enlarge their 
 knowledge. And might not the thought be 
 suggested at some moment, (see how many 
 things may be envied in their turns !) how happy 
 they should be, if, with the vast superiority of 
 their advantages, they could be just as little 
 accountable ? But not even when the unwel- 
 come truth of their own high responsibility did 
 strike them by a reflected thought from the very 
 view of the difference between their situation 
 
302 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 and that of this subordinate tribe, not even 
 then was it suggested to them, that they should 
 ever be arraigned on a charge to which they 
 would vainly wish to be permitted to plead, 
 '' Were we our brothers' keepers ?" And if an 
 office designated in those terms had been named 
 to them, as a part of their duty, by some un- 
 earthly voice of imperious accent, their thoughts 
 might have traversed hither and thither, in 
 various conjectures and protracted perplexity, 
 before the objects of that office had been pre- 
 sented explicitly to their apprehension as no 
 other than the reason, principles, consciences, 
 and the whole moral condition of the vulgar 
 mass. They would understand that its con- 
 dition was, in some way or other, a concern lying 
 at their door, but probably not in this. — We 
 repeat that we speak generally, and not uni- 
 versally. 
 
 But we think there are signs of a revolution 
 beginning ; a more important one, by its higher 
 principle and its expansive impulse toward a 
 wide and remote beneficence, than the ordinary 
 events of that name. What have commonly 
 been the matter and circumstance of revolu- 
 tions ? The last deciding blow in a deadly 
 competition of equally selfish parties; actions 
 and re-actions of ambition and revenge ; the fiat 
 of a conqueror ; a burst of Wind fury, suddenly 
 sweeping away an old order of things, but 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 303 
 
 overwhelming too all attempts to substitute a 
 better institution ; plots, massacres, battles, de- 
 thronements, restorations : all ordinary things in 
 principle and action. How little of the sublime of 
 moral agency has there been, with one or two 
 partial exceptions, in these mighty commotions; 
 how little wisdom or virtue, or reference to the 
 Supreme Patron of national interests ; how little 
 nobleness or even distinctness of purpose, or 
 consolidated advantage of success ! But here is, 
 as we trust, the approach of a revolution with 
 different phenomena. It displays its quality and 
 project in activities, of continually enlarging 
 scope and variety of prosecution, for the uni- 
 versal diffusion of the divine revelation ; in 
 enterprises to attempt an opening of the doors 
 of all the immense prison-houses of human spirits 
 in every region ; in schemes, more speedily 
 animated into practical operation, and faster 
 widened as they advance, than good designs 
 were wont to be in former times, for spreading 
 education and useful knowledge over the dead 
 waste where there were none ; in multiplying 
 exertions, in all regular and all uncanonical 
 forms, to make it impossible to mankind to 
 avoid hearing the voice of religion : and all this 
 taking advantage of the new and powerful move- 
 ment in the general mind ; as bold adventurers 
 have sometimes availed themselves of a formi- 
 dable torrent, to be conveyed whither the stream 
 in its accustomed state would never have carried 
 
304 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 them ; or as we have heard of heroic assailants 
 seizing the moment of an awful tempest to 
 break through the enemy's lines. — Such are 
 some of the insignia by which it stands distin- 
 guished out and far off from the rank of ordi- 
 nary revolutions. 
 
 Do these appear but a feeble and fantastic 
 show of forces to be reckoned on for a great 
 revolution, to the mere political projectors who 
 are speculating on this same object, of melio- 
 rating the state and character of the people ? 
 At hearing such things named, are they amused 
 to think how every sort of weak and beguiled 
 understanding can please itself with its own 
 fancies, or the illusions imposed on it by every 
 sanguine visionary ? While they acknowledge, 
 indeed, they say, the valuable effect of general 
 education of a certain order, and of the general 
 diffusion of knowledge of certain kinds, i/'any 
 such things were feasible, do they pronounce this 
 part of the projected means so impracticable, and 
 the other means calculated on so fanatical, that 
 the whole thing is, in commercial language, no 
 better than moonshine, so long as the present 
 constitution of society shall continue ? At the 
 mention, especially, of the expedients of a reli- 
 gious kind, they are perhaps reminded of Glen- 
 dower's grave and earnest talk of calling up 
 spirits from the deep ; or (should it ever have 
 happened that they have read the bible) of the 
 people who seized, in honest credulous delight. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 305 
 
 the mockery of the proposal of pulling a city, to 
 the last small stone, into the river with ropes, as 
 a prime stroke of generalship. But then we 
 might ask them. And in what manner do you 
 cooly make out, in your speculations on a grand 
 amendment of the popular condition, either the 
 practicabihty or the sufficiency of some merely 
 or mainly political scheme of renovation, in com- 
 parison of which you despise these simply intel- 
 lectual, moral, and religious forces, now put in 
 operation without waiting for a political change ? 
 As a preliminary point, how are you to obtain, 
 (if your theory of an improved state of the peo- 
 ple require that there be obtained in the Jirst 
 instance,) any great political changes in their 
 favour ?* In what manner can you promise 
 yourselves to bring into effect a theory, that 
 should presume a hasty concession of privileges 
 to the people by the superior orders of the com- 
 munity, while those orders have to allege in 
 justification of refusal, that the people are so 
 ignorant, and so exceedingly corrupt, as to be 
 
 * A pertinent question or challenge at the time this was 
 written. To a certain considerable extent of what it asserted 
 by implication, the persons supposed to be addressed would 
 have had their answer in a somewhat exulting tone, if there 
 had been with them an augur to foretell, and they could have 
 believed, what was to come to pass a few years afterward. It 
 remains to be seen how far the changes already accomplished, 
 and those to come as the necessary consequences, will aid the 
 process of that popular improvement, to which the persons in 
 question asserted a grand political change to be prerequisite, 
 so prerequisite that the whole affair was hopeless without it. 
 
 X 
 
306 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 totally unfit for the possession of such privileges, 
 even supposing them, abstractedly speaking, 
 their right. 
 
 But suppose the leading classes did not 
 refuse any one thing you would ask, for redu- 
 cing your theory to practice, or to experiment. 
 Suppose the people instated in the fulness of 
 vy^hat you would deem the privileges rightfully 
 appropriate to their situation in the community ; 
 placed on just such a ground in the great politi- 
 cal arrangement as you would wish to claim and 
 vindicate for them, in order to raise them, as you 
 think, to respectabihty and happiness. Suppose 
 them placed there at this moment ; and what 
 then ? How, — through what mode of the salu- 
 tary effect of this change, — are the felicitous 
 consequences to follow ? You know, yes, you 
 absolutely know, that a vast majority of the mul- 
 titude are, at this hour, as wretchedly ignorant 
 and corrupt as they have been represented by 
 those who are regarded, and not unjustly, as 
 their enemies. Hardly any language on this 
 subject can exceed the melancholy truth. Nor 
 can any thing on earth be more contemptible 
 than that strain of talking which affects a confi- 
 dence in their present enlightened judgment, 
 their steady principles, their well ordered dispo- 
 sitions, and so forth ; and which, in addressing 
 them, multiphes phrases of deference, and makes 
 a kind of boasting in their name, as if in them 
 were to be found nearly all that exists of sterling 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 307 
 
 worth in the land. It is but an incipient and 
 exceedingly partial appearance of transforma- 
 tion that the most sanguine of us can, as yet, 
 profess to perceive as the result of all the new 
 and augmenting moral forces in recent times 
 brought into operation ; so inveterate, so obdu- 
 rate, so profound in evil, is that popular condition 
 which is attempted to be corrected. And yet 
 you really can, notwithstanding, place it, in ima- 
 gination, under some merely political auspicious 
 adjustment which shall act upon it with a more 
 immediate and powerful efficacy of correction, 
 shall more surely create a predisposition to all 
 that is good, than any alterative influence of such 
 better education, and such multiplied zealous 
 religious instruction, as an active benevolence 
 may even now impart to them. But how ? 
 Through the medium of what principles ? 
 Think in what terms you shall name these 
 political vitalities, so effective for a moral rege- 
 neration. Would you, perhaps, talk of the dig- 
 nified sense of independence ; the generous, the 
 liberahzing, the ennobling sentiments of freedom ; 
 the self-respect, and conscious responsibility, of 
 men in the full exercise of their rights ; the 
 manly disdain of what is base ; and the innate 
 sense and love of what is worthy and honourable, 
 which would spontaneously develop itself on the 
 removal of certain ungenial circumstances in the 
 pohtical constitution of society, which have been 
 a winter on the moral nature of its inferior 
 
 x2 
 
308 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 portions ? It would be difficult to believe that you 
 could find all this listened to with gravity, as the 
 veritable description of an order of sentiments to 
 be brought into action in a rude mass of huma- 
 nity, v/ithout wishing, for amusement's sake, to 
 see the whole capacity of such credence tried by 
 some reciter of popish miracles, or some pretender 
 to make a sport of the absolute laws of nature 
 by terms and antics of magic. 
 
 But possibly you will say that this is shooting 
 beside the mark, for that it is not a merely poli- 
 tical scheme you are speculating on for making 
 the people better and happier. Perhaps you will 
 profess that, while you demand for them a liberal 
 change in the political constitution of the com- 
 munity, as a grand and primary requisite, which 
 would of itself do much to rescue them from 
 their moral degradation, and would place them 
 on a far more advantageous ground for the effi- 
 cacy of all the other corrective expedients, to 
 follow specifically and in detail, you fully admit, 
 and indeed insist on, the necessity of an ample 
 and active provision for imparting knowledge, 
 and even inculcating rehgion. Perhaps you will 
 even say, that one chief object you have in view 
 in the required amendment of the political in- 
 stitutions, is to raise the people to a greater 
 fitness, and to create a more effective system of 
 means, for this very discipline. Do you say so ? 
 Then confess that those persons are right at all 
 events, who are zealous to bring into operation 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 309 
 
 immediately the expedients thus admitted by 
 yourselves to be indispensable somewhere in the 
 process ; who will do it as so much gained at any 
 rate, in despite of the reluctance of the economy 
 around them to dispose itself into an order con- 
 genial wath the beneficent design. Whatever 
 order of things you would conceive as the most 
 propitious to the improvement of the people, 
 what would that improvement itself consist in, 
 for its most valuable part, but exactly that which 
 is endeavoured to be imparted now, by the men 
 who will not wait for the far off fortunate aspects 
 and conjunctions of your political astrology ? 
 We should say, which is imparted by them ; for 
 they find, notwithstanding all that is counterac- 
 tive in the political system, that in some measure 
 their scheme for infusing that best improvement 
 can be brought in contact with the mind of the 
 humbler order, in its juvenile portion ; and that 
 already, as from the garment of the divine Healer 
 of diseases, a sanative virtue goes out of it. And 
 shall they despise this measure of utility, just 
 because it bears upon it the honour of having 
 been effected in defiance of an inauspicious 
 national economy, or because they can imagine 
 how much greater it might have been under a 
 benignant one ? They acknowledge with regret 
 the exceedingly limited reach and force of their 
 operations, as compared with the immensity of the 
 assemblage of intellectual and moral existence re- 
 quiring to be operated upon. They will perfectly 
 
310 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 agree with you, that every thing in the constitution 
 of a state shouldhe so adjusted that the main force 
 of that state should bear on this great object. 
 But at the same time, who are the truer friends 
 of the people, — they, who find an intrinsic value 
 in such means as there are, in the absence of 
 whatever means there are not, and actively exert 
 themselves that the people may be the better so 
 far ; or you, who rate all means as but cyphers 
 unless a certain favourite one be at their head ; 
 and would almost be content that, till it shall be 
 there, the people should remain just as they are 
 for mere evidence that no scheme but yours can 
 do them good ? 
 
 Of the persons whose imagination goes imme- 
 diately to the governing power of the State in 
 every speculation on possibihties and means of po- 
 pular improvement, some dwell on distinct points 
 and modes of operation, for which that power has 
 the abihty and only wants the will; and they 
 are despondent and indignant at its utter dis- 
 regard of expedients which they deem of such 
 immense possible utiHty. Others acknowledge 
 that they do not lay such pointed stress on par- 
 ticular circumstances in the political arrange- 
 ment ; that it is not so much because the chief 
 power of the State will not adopt this or that 
 special plan or measure of political institution, 
 that they feel discouragement and resentment 
 while they are indulging the imagination how 
 much good might flow, from the resources at its 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 31 1 
 
 command, to pour life and vigour into the pro- 
 cess for reforming and elevating the people. 
 They say, that though they may often be vexed 
 at the consideration of some distinct part or 
 circumstance of the political system, where 
 a deficiency or a mischief to the popular 
 welfare has been perpetrated from generation 
 to generation, the weight of their reproach 
 against the institutions and administrators of 
 states falls on them in a more general form ; it 
 rests on the grand fact, most conspicuous in the 
 past and present view of the world, that they do 
 never, in the plenitude of their power, actually 
 produce the effect of saving the people from a 
 wretched mental degradation, nor seriously exert 
 their power with this intention. It is, they 
 say, on this enormous practical failure that 
 they dwell, with such deep displacency, rather 
 than on precise defects in the construction 
 of states, theoretically considered. And then 
 they confess, that the contemplation of this 
 fact, with so slender a hope as they are per- 
 mitted to indulge of its being soon reversed, 
 has the effect of reducing almost to futility, in 
 their view, the little schemes and efforts of in- 
 dividuals directed toward such an object. 
 
 Now we earnestly wish it might be granted 
 by the Almighty, that the political institutions 
 of the nations should speedily take a form, 
 and come under an administration, that would 
 apply the energy of the state to so sublime 
 
312 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 a purpose ; nor can we imagine any test of 
 their merits so fair as the question whether, 
 and in what degree, they do this ; nor any 
 test by which they may more naturally dechne 
 to have those merits tried. But since, to the 
 shame of our nature, there is no use to which 
 we are so prone to turn our condemnation of 
 evil in one form, as that of purchasing a license 
 for it in another, the persons now in our view 
 should be warned that they do not take from 
 the awful omissions of states a sanction for 
 individuals to do nothing. Let them not suffer 
 an imposition on their minds in the notion 
 entertained of a state, as a thing to be no 
 otherwise accounted of than in a collective ca- 
 pacity, acting by a government ; as if the col- 
 lective power and agency of a nation became, 
 in being exerted through that political organ, 
 an affair altogether foreign to the will, the 
 action, the duty, the responsibility, of the per- 
 sons of whom the nation is composed. Let 
 them not put out of sight that whatever is the 
 duty of the national body in that collective 
 capacity, acting through its government, is such 
 only because it is the duty of the individuals 
 composing that body, as far as it is in the 
 power of each ; and that it would be their duty 
 individually not the less though the govern- 
 ment, as the depositary of the national power, 
 neglect it. But more than this ; to speak gene- 
 rally, and with certain degrees of possible 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 313 
 
 exception, we may affirm that a government can- 
 not be lastingly neglectful of a great duty but 
 because the individuals constituting the commu- 
 nity are so. Suppose the government to have 
 been utterly and criminally neglectful of the 
 moral condition of the inferior population, age 
 after age, and through every change of its ad- 
 ministrators ; and then suppose the assertion 
 to be made that, nevertheless, the generality of 
 the individuals of intelligence, wealth, and in- 
 fluence, have all the while been of a quite 
 opposite spirit, zealously intent on remedying 
 the flagrant evil : the assertion is false, would 
 be the instant declaration of all who heard it, 
 and without any need to refer to the actual 
 matter of fact in contradiction. Such an en- 
 lightened and philanthropic spirit prevailing 
 widely among the individuals of the nation 
 would carry its impulse into the government, in 
 one manner or another. It would either con- 
 strain the administrators of the state to act in 
 conformity, or would ultimately displace them 
 in favour of better men. Even if, far short of 
 such a general activity of the respectable and 
 locally influential members of society, a consi- 
 derably large proportion of them had vigorously 
 prosecuted such a purpose, it would have com- 
 pelled the administrators of the state to consider, 
 even for their own sake, whether they should be 
 content to see so important a process going on 
 
314 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 independently of them, and in contrast with 
 their own disgraceful neglect. 
 
 But at the worst, and on the supposition that 
 they were obstinately inaccessible to all moral and 
 philanthropic considerations, still a grand im- 
 provement would have been accomphshed, if 
 many thousands of the responsible members of 
 the community had attempted it with zealous and 
 persevering exertion. The neglect, therefore, 
 of the improvement of the people, so glaring in 
 the review of our conduct as a nation, has been, 
 to a very great extent, the insensibility of indi- 
 viduals to obligations lying on them as such, 
 independently of the institutions and admi- 
 nistration of the state. 
 
 And are individuals now absolved from all 
 such responsibihty ; and the more so, that 
 the conviction of the importance of the object 
 is come upon them with such a new and mighty 
 force ? When they say, reproachfully, that the 
 nation, as a body politic, concentrating its 
 powers in its government, disowns or neglects 
 a most important duty, is it to be understood 
 that this accusatory testimony is tlieir share, or 
 something equivalent in substitution for their 
 share, of that very duty ? Does a collective 
 duty, of such very sohd substance, vanish into 
 nothing under any attempted process of re- 
 solving it into fractions and portions for in- 
 dividuals ? And do they themselves, as some 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 315 
 
 of the individuals to whom this duty might thus 
 be distributively assigned, — do they themselves, 
 in spite of self-love, self-estimation, and all the 
 sentiments vs^hich they v^dll at other times in- 
 dulge in homage of their own importance, — do 
 they, when this assignment is attempted to be 
 made to them, instantly and willingly surrender 
 to a feeling of dissolving from this proud indi- 
 viduality into an un distinguishable existence in 
 the mass, and, profaning the language of re- 
 hgion, say to the State, " In thee we live, 
 move, and have a being?" Or, will they, (in 
 assimilation to eastern pagans, who hold that 
 a divinity so pervades them as to be their wills 
 and do their actions, leaving the mere human 
 vehicle without power, duty, or accountable- 
 ness,) will they account themselves but as 
 passive matter, moved or fixed, and in all things 
 necessitated, by a sovereign mythological some- 
 thing denominated the State ? 
 
 No, not in all things. It is not so that they 
 feel with respect to those other interests and 
 projects, which they are really in earnest to 
 promote, though those concerns may lie in no 
 greater proportion than the one in question 
 does within the scope of their individual ability. 
 The incubus has then vanished ; and they find 
 themselves in possession of a free agency, and 
 a degree of power which they will not patiently 
 hear estimated in any such contemptuous terms. 
 What is there then that should reduce them. 
 
316 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 as individual agents, to such utter and willing 
 insignificance in the affair of which we are 
 speaking ? Besides, they may form themselves, 
 in indefinite number, into combination. And is 
 there no power in any collective form in which 
 they can be associated, save just that one in 
 which the aggregation is constituted under the 
 political shape and authority denominated a 
 state ? Or is it at last that some alarm of super- 
 stitious loyalty comes over them ; that they 
 grow uneasy in conscience at the high-toned 
 censure they have been stimulated and betrayed 
 to pronounce on the state ; that they relapse 
 into the obsequiousness of hesitating, whether 
 they should attempt to do good of a kind 
 which that high agent has left undone; that 
 they must wait for the sanction of its great 
 example ; that till the " shout of kings is 
 among them" it were better not to march 
 against the vandalism and the paganism which 
 are, the while, quite at their ease, destroying 
 the people ? 
 
 But if such had always been the way in 
 which private individuals, single or associated, 
 had accounted of themselves and their possible 
 exertions, in regard to great general improve- 
 ments, but very few would ever have been 
 accomplished. For the case has commonly 
 been, that the schemes of such improvements 
 have originated with persons not invested with 
 political power; have been urged on by the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 317 
 
 accession and cooperation of such individuals; 
 and at length slowly and reluctantly acceded to 
 by the holders of dominion over the community, 
 always the last to admit what had long ap- 
 peared to the majority of thinking men no less 
 than demonstrative evidence of the propriety 
 and advantage of the reformation. 
 
 In all probability, the improvement of man- 
 kind is destined, under Divine Providence, to 
 advance just in proportion as good men feel 
 the responsibility for it resting on themselves 
 as individuals, and are actuated by a bold sen- 
 timent of independence, (humble, at the same 
 time, in reference to the necessity of a celestial 
 agency), in the prosecution of it. Each person 
 who is standing still to look, with grief or 
 indignation, at the evils which are overrunning 
 the world, would do well to recollect what he 
 may have read of some gallant partizan, who, 
 perceiving where . a prompt movement, with the 
 force at his own command, would make an 
 impression infallibly tending to the success of 
 the warfare, could not endure to lose the time 
 till some great sultan should find it convenient 
 to come in slow march, and the pomp of state, to 
 take on him the direction of the campaign. 
 
 In laying this emphasis of incitement and 
 hope on the exertions of good men as indivi- 
 duals, we cannot be understood to mean that 
 the government of states, if once they were to 
 be in earnest for rendering the condition of 
 
318 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 society better and happier, could not contribute 
 beyond all calculation to the force and efficacy 
 of every project and measure for that grand 
 purpose. How far from it ! it is melancholy to 
 consider what they might do and do not. But 
 it is because their history, thus far, affords such 
 feeble prognostics of their becoming, till some 
 better age, actuated by such a spirit, — it is 
 because the Divine Governor has hitherto put 
 upon them so little of the honour of being the 
 instruments of his beneficence, — that the anti- 
 cipations of good, and the exhortations to 
 attempt it, are so peculiarly directed to its pro- 
 moters in an individual capacity. 
 
 Happily, the accusatory part of such exhor- 
 tations is becoming, we trust we may say fast 
 becoming, less extensively applicable ; and we 
 return with pleasure to the animating idea of 
 that revolution of which we were noting the 
 introductory signs. It is a revolution in the 
 manner of estimating the souls of the people, 
 and consequently in the judgment of what 
 should be done for both their present and future 
 welfare. Through many ages, that immense 
 multitude had been but obscurely presented to 
 view in the character of rational improvable 
 creatures. They were recognised but as one 
 large mass of rude moral substance, but faintly 
 distinguishable into individuals; existing, and 
 to be left to exist, in their own manner ; and 
 that manner hardly worth concern or inquiry. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 319 
 
 Little consideration could there be of how much 
 spiritual immortal essence must be going to 
 waste, all over the wide field where the inferior 
 portion of humanity was nearly obscured from 
 the observant consideration of the more favoured 
 part of the race. But now it is as if a mist 
 were rising and dispersing from that field, and 
 leaving the multitude of possessors of unculti- 
 vated and degraded mind exhibited in a light 
 in which they were never seen before, except 
 by the faithful promoters of Christianity, and a 
 small number of other philanthropists. 
 
 It is true, this manifestation forms so tragic 
 a vision, that if we had only to behold it as a 
 spectacle, we might well desire that the misty 
 obscurity should descend upon it again, to shroud 
 it from sight; while we should be left to in- 
 dulge and elate our imaginations by dwelhng 
 on the pomps and splendours of the terrestrial 
 scene, — the mighty empires, the heroes, the 
 victories, the triumphs; the refinements and 
 enjoyments of the most highly cultivated of the 
 race; the brilliant performances of genius, and 
 the astonishing reach of science. So the tempter 
 would have beguiled our Lord into a complacent 
 contemplation of the kingdoms and glories of 
 the world. But he was come to look on a dif- 
 ferent aspect of it! Nor could he be with- 
 drawn from the gloomy view of its degradation 
 and misery. And a good reason why. For the 
 sole object for which he had appeared in the 
 
320 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 only world where temptation could even in form 
 approach him was to begin in operation, and 
 finish in virtue, a design for changing that state 
 of degradation and misery. In the prosecution 
 of such a design, and in the spirit of that 
 divine benevolence in which it sprung, he could 
 endure to fix on the melancholy and odious 
 character of the scene, the contemplation which 
 was vainly attempted to be diverted to any other 
 of its aspects. What, indeed, could sublunary 
 pomps and glories be to him in any case ; but 
 emphatically what, when his object was to 
 redeem the people from darkness and de- 
 struction ? 
 
 Those who, actuated by a spirit in some re- 
 mote resemblance to His, have entered deeply 
 into the state of the people, such as it is found 
 in our own nation, have often been appalled at 
 the spectacle disclosed to them. They have 
 been astonished to think what can have been 
 the direction, while successive ages have passed 
 away, of so many thousands of acute and vigi- 
 lant mental eyes, that so dreadful a sight should 
 scarcely have been descried. They have been 
 aware that in describing it as they actually saw 
 it, they would be regarded by some as gloomy 
 fanatics, tinctured with insanity by the influence 
 of some austere creed ; and that others, of 
 kinder nature, but whose sensibility has more 
 of self-indulging refinement than tendency to 
 active benevolence, would almost wish that so 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 321 
 
 revolting an exhibition had never been made, 
 though the fact be actually so. There may 
 have been moments when even they themselves 
 have experienced a temporary recoil of their 
 benevolent zeal, under the impression at once 
 of the immensity of the evil and its grievously 
 offensive quality. At times, the rudeness of 
 the subjects, and perhaps the ungracious recep- 
 tion and thankless requital of their disinterested 
 labours, aggravating the general feeling of the 
 miserableness, (so to express it,) of seeing so 
 much misery, have lent seduction to the tempta- 
 tions to ease and self-indulgence. Why should 
 they, just they of all men, condemn them- 
 selves to dwell so much in the most dreary 
 climate of the moral world, when they could 
 perhaps have taken their almost constant abode 
 in a little elysium of elegant knowledge, taste, 
 and refined society? Then was the time to 
 revert to the example of him " who, though he 
 was rich, for our sakes became poor." 
 
 Or, again, their thoughts may not unfre- 
 quently be turned on that view of things, which 
 we have described as so habitual, and of such 
 withering effect, with men who speculate on 
 benevolence with too Httle of its spirit. They 
 may have indulged too long in the bitter mood 
 of thinking how entirely the higher and more 
 amply furnished powers leave such generous 
 designs to proceed as they can, in the mere 
 strength of private individual exertion. And they 
 
322 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 may have yielded to depressive feelings after the 
 fervour of indignant ones : for such indignation, 
 unless qualified by the purest principle — unless 
 it be the " anger that sins not " — is very apt, 
 when it cools, to settle into misanthropic despon- 
 dency. It is as if, (they have said,) armies and 
 giants would stand aloof to amuse themselves, 
 while we are to be committed and abandoned 
 in the ceaseless unavailable toil of a conflict, 
 which these armies and giants have no business 
 even to exist as such but for the very purpose of 
 waging. We are, if we will, — and if we will we 
 may let it alone — to try to effect in diminutive 
 pieces, and detached local efforts, a little share 
 of that, to the accomplishment of which the 
 greatest human force on earth might be applied 
 on system, and to the widest compass. — So they 
 have said, perhaps, and been tempted to leave 
 their object to its destiny. 
 
 But really it is now too late for this resentful 
 and desponding abandonment. They cannot 
 now retire in the tragic dignity of despair. It 
 must be some more forlorn predicament that 
 would allow them any grace of rhetoric in say- 
 ing, as in parody of Cato, '' Witness heaven and 
 earth, we have done our duty, but the stars and 
 fate are against us; and here it becomes us to 
 terminate a strife, which would degenerate into 
 the ridiculous if prosecuted against impossibili- 
 ties." On the contrary, the zeal which could 
 begin so onerous a work, and prosecute it thus 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 323 
 
 far, could not now remit without betraying its 
 past ardour to the reproach and ridicule due to 
 a vain caprice. Is it for the projectors of a 
 noble edifice for public utility, to abandon the 
 undertaking when it has risen from its founda- 
 tion to be seen above the ground ; or is just 
 come to be level with the surface of the waters, 
 in defiance of which it has been commenced, and 
 the violence of which it was designed to control, 
 or the unfordable depths and streams of which 
 it was to bear people over ? Let the pro- 
 moters of education and christian knowledge 
 among the inferior classes, reflect what has 
 already been accomplished ; regarding it, we 
 once again repeat, as quite the incipient stage. 
 It is most truly as yet " the day of small things;" 
 but let them recount the individuals whom, 
 nevertheless, they have seen rescued from what 
 had all the signs of a destination to the lowest 
 debasement, and utter ruin ; some of whom are 
 returning animated thanks, and will do so in 
 the hour of death, for what these, their best 
 human friends, have been the means of impart- 
 ing to them. Let them recollect of how many 
 families they have seen the domestic condition 
 pleasingly, and, in some instances eminently and 
 dehghtfully amended. And let them reflect 
 how they have trampled down prejudices, nearly 
 silenced a heathenish clamour, and provoked the 
 imitative and rival efforts of many who would, 
 but for them, have been cordially willing for all 
 
 y2 
 
324 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 such schemes to lie in abeyance to the end of 
 time. Let them think of all this, and faithfully 
 persist in the trial what it may please God that 
 they shall accomplish, whether the possessors of 
 national power will acknowledge his demand for 
 such an application of it or not ; whether, when 
 the infinite importance of the concern is repre- 
 sented to them, they will hear, or whether they 
 will forbear. 
 
 But let them not doubt that the time will 
 come, when the rulers and the ascendent classes 
 in states will comprehend it to be their best 
 policy to promote all possible improvement of 
 the people. It will be given to them to under- 
 stand, that the highest glory of those at the 
 head of great communities, must consist in the 
 eminence attained by those communities gene- 
 rally, in whatever it is that constitutes the worth, 
 the honour, the happiness, of individuals. They 
 will one day have learned to esteem it a far 
 nobler form of power to lead and direct an 
 immense combination of intelligent minds, than 
 to coerce and drive a vast semibarbarous herd. 
 Providence surely will one day, in the progress 
 of society, confer on it such wise and virtuous 
 rulers as can feel, that it is better for them to 
 have a people who can understand and ration- 
 ally approve, when deserving of approbation, 
 their system and measures, than one bent in 
 stupid submission, even if ignorance could 
 henceforward suffice to retain the people in 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 325 
 
 that posture ; better, therefore, by a still stronger 
 reason, than to have a people fermenting in 
 ignorant disaffection, constantly believing the 
 governors to be in the wrong, and without the 
 sense to comprehend any arguments in justifica- 
 tion, excepting such as might be addressed in the 
 shape of bribes to corruption. And a time will 
 come when it will not be left to the philanthropic 
 or censorial speculatists alone, to make the com- 
 parative estimate between what has been effected 
 by the enormously expensive apparatus of coer- 
 cive and penal administration, — the prisons, pro- 
 secutions, transportations, and a large military 
 police, (things quite necessary in our past and 
 present national condition,) and what might have 
 been effected by one half of that expenditure 
 devoted to popular reformation, to be accom- 
 plished by means of schools, and every practica- 
 ble variety of methods for placing men's judgment 
 and conscience as the " lion in the way," when 
 they are inclined and tempted to go wrong. — 
 All this will come to pass at length. And if the 
 promoters of the best designs see cause to fear 
 that the time is remote, this should but enforce 
 upon them the more strongly the admonition 
 that no time is theirs, but the present. 
 
 It was not possible to pursue the long course 
 of these observations so nearly to the conclu- 
 sion, without having been many times reminded, 
 that there will be persons ready to impute 
 
326 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 sanguine extravagance to our expectations of the 
 result of such an order of means and exertions 
 for the improvement of the education and mental 
 condition of the people, as we see already begin- 
 ning to work; we mean, the many schools, 
 which have had their origin, and thus far their 
 support, in free benevolence; the much more 
 numerous attendance on the public ministrations 
 of religion, themselves too in a progress of 
 reformation and enlargement ; and that increased 
 reading, for which we trust that the schools and 
 public instructions will both inspire and correct 
 the taste. When the means are of so little 
 splendid a quality, it will be said, by what infla- 
 tion of fancy is their power admeasured to such 
 effects ? 
 
 And what is it, then, how much is it, that the 
 advocates of the system profess to anticipate ? 
 Are they heard maintaining that the communica- 
 tion of knowledge, or true notions of things, to 
 youthful minds, will infallibly ensure their virtue 
 and happiness ? They are not quite so new to 
 the world, to experimental labours in the busi- 
 ness of tuition, or to self-observation. Their 
 vigilance would hardly overlook such a circum- 
 stance as the very different degree of assurance 
 with which the effects may be predicted, of 
 ignorance on the one hand, and of knowledge 
 on the other. There is very nearly an absolute 
 certainty of success in the method for making 
 clowns, sots, vagabonds, and ruffians. You may 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 327 
 
 safely leave it to themselves to carry on the 
 process for becoming complete. Let human 
 creatures grow up without discipline, destitute 
 therefore of salutary information, sound judg- 
 ment, or any conscience but what will shape 
 itself to whatever they like, and serve in the man- 
 ner of some vile friar pander in the old plays, — 
 and no one thinks of taking any credit for fore- 
 sight in saying they will be a noxious burden on 
 the earth ; except indeed in those tracts of it 
 where they seem to have their appropriate place 
 and business, in being matched against the 
 wolves and bears of the wilderness. When 
 they infest what should be a civilized and chris- 
 tianized part of the world, the philanthropist is 
 sometimes put in doubt whether to repress, or 
 indulge, the sentiment which tempts him to 
 complacency in the operation of an epidemic 
 which is thinning their numbers. 
 
 The consequences of ignorance are certain, 
 unless almost a miracle interpose ; but un- 
 happily those of knowledge are of diffident 
 and restricted calculation ; unless we could 
 make a trifle of the testimony of all ages, and 
 suppress the evidence of present experience, 
 that men may see and approve the better, and 
 yet follow the worse. It is the hapless pre- 
 dicament of our nature, that the noblest of its 
 powers, the understanding, has but most im- 
 perfectly and precariously that commanding 
 hold on the others, which is essential to the 
 
328 ON POPULAR IGNORANCK. 
 
 good order of the soul. Our constitution is 
 like a machine in which there is a constant 
 liability of the secondary wheels to be thrown 
 out of the catch and grapple of the master 
 one. And worse than so, these powers which 
 ought to be subordinate and obedient to the 
 understanding, are not left to stand still when 
 detached from its control. They have a strong 
 activity of their own, from the impulse of other 
 principles : indeed, it is this impulse that causes 
 the detachment. It is frightful to look at the 
 evidence from facts, that these active powers 
 may grov/ strong in the perversity which will 
 set the judgment at defiance, during the very 
 time that it is successfully training to a com- 
 petence for dictating to them what is right. 
 The assertions of those who are determined to 
 find the cause of the wrong direction of the 
 passions and will in misapprehension of the 
 understanding, are a gross assumption, in a 
 question of fact, against an infinite crowd of 
 facts pressing round with their evidence. This 
 evidence is offered by men without number dis- 
 tinctly and deliberately avowing their convic- 
 tion of the evil quality, and fatal consequences, 
 of courses which they are soon afterwards seen 
 pursuing, and vnthout the smallest pretence of 
 a change of opinion ; by the same men in more 
 advanced stages still owning the same con- 
 viction, and sometimes in strong terms of self- 
 reproach, in the checks and pauses of their 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 329 
 
 career; and by men in the near prospect of 
 death and judgment expressing, in bitter regret, 
 the acknowledgment that they had persisted in 
 acting wrong while they knew better. And 
 this assumption so wilfully made against such 
 evidence, is to be maintained for no better 
 reason, that appears, than that human nature 
 cannot, must not, shall not, be so absurd and 
 depraved as to be capable of such madness : 
 as if human nature were taking the smallest 
 trouble to put on any disguise before them, to 
 beguile them into a good opinion ; as if it 
 would be cajoled by *their flattery to assume 
 even a semblance of deserving it ; as if it had 
 the complaisance to check any one bad pro- 
 pensity, to save them from standing contra- 
 dicted and exposed to ridicule for speaking of 
 it with indulgence or respect ; as if it staid or 
 cared to thank them for their pains in attempt- 
 ing to make out a plausible extenuation. It 
 has, and keeps, and shows its character, in per- 
 fect indifference to the puzzled efforts of its 
 apologists to reduce its moral turpitude to just 
 so much error of the understanding. But, as for 
 understanding — it should be time to look to 
 their own, when they find themselves asserting, 
 in other words, that there is actually as much 
 virtue in the world as there is knowledge of its 
 principles and laws. We should rather have 
 surmised that, deplorably deficient as that know- 
 ledge is, th@ reduction of a fifth or tenth part 
 
330 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 of it to practice would make a glorious change 
 in England and Europe. 
 
 The persons, therefore, whose zeal is com- 
 bined with knowledge in the prosecution of 
 plans for the extension of education, proceed 
 on a calculation of an effect more limited, in 
 apparent proportion to the means, and with 
 less certainty of even that more limited mea- 
 sure in any single instance, than they would 
 have been justified in anticipating in many 
 other departments of operation. They would, 
 for example, predict more positively the results 
 of an undertaking to cultivate any tract of waste 
 land, to reclaim a bog, or to render mechanical 
 forces available in an untried mode of applica- 
 tion ; or, in many cases, the decided success of 
 the healing art as applied to a diseased body. 
 They must needs be moderate in their con- 
 fidence of calculation for good, on a moral 
 nature whose corruption would yield an enemy 
 of mankind a gratifying probability in calcu- 
 lating for evil. In comparing these opposite 
 calculations, they would at some moments of 
 discouragement be glad if they might make an 
 exchange of the respective probabilities. That 
 is to say, let a man, if such there be, who could 
 be pleased with the depravity and misery of 
 the race, a sagacious judge too, of their moral 
 constitution, and a veteran observer of their 
 conduct, — let him survey with the look of an 
 evil spirit a hundred children in one of the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 331 
 
 benevolent schools, and indulge himself in 
 prognosticating, on the strength of what he 
 knows of human nature, the proportion, in 
 numbers and degree, in which these children 
 will, in subsequent life, exemplify the failure 
 of what is done for their wisdom and welfare ; — 
 let him make his calculation, and, we say, there 
 may be times when the friends of these institu- 
 tions would be glad to transfer the quantity of 
 probability from his side to theirs ; would feel 
 they should be happy if the proportion in which 
 they fear he may be right in Calculating on evil 
 from the nature of the beings under discipline, 
 were, instead, the proportion in which it is ra- 
 tional to reckon on good from the efficacy of 
 that discipline. " Evil be thou my good," might 
 be their involuntary apostrophe, in the sense of 
 wishing to possess the stronger power, trans- 
 muted to the better quality. 
 
 But we shall know where to stop in the 
 course of observations of this darkening colour ; 
 and shall take off the point of the derider's 
 taunt, just forthcoming, that we are here un- 
 saying, in effect, all that we have been so 
 laboriously urging about the vast benefit of 
 knowledge to the people. It was proper to 
 show, that the prosecutors of these designs are 
 not suffering themselves to be duped out of a 
 perception of what there is in the nature of the 
 youthful subjects to counteract the intention of 
 the discipline, and with too certain a power to 
 
332 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 limit its efficacy to a very partial measure of the 
 effect desired. These projectors might fairly 
 be required to prove they are not unknow- 
 ing enthusiasts ; but then, in keeping clear of 
 the vain extravagancies of expectation, they are 
 not to surrender their confidence that something 
 great and important can be done : it should be 
 possible for a man to be sober, short of being 
 dead. They are not to gravitate into a state 
 of feeling as if they thought the understanding 
 and the moral powers are but casually associated 
 in the mind ; as if an important communication 
 to the one, might, so to speak, never be heard 
 of by the others; as if these subordinates had 
 just one sole principle of action — that of dis- 
 obeying their chief, so that it could be of no use 
 to appeal to the master of the house respecting 
 the conduct of his inmates ; as if, therefore, all 
 presumption of a relation between means and 
 ends, as a ground of confidence in the efficacy 
 of popular instruction, must be illusory. It 
 miofht not indeed be amiss for them to be told 
 that the case is so, by those who would desire, 
 from whatever motive, to repress their efforts 
 and defeat their designs. For so downright a 
 blow at the vital principle of their favourite 
 object would but serve to provoke them to a 
 determined exercise of thought, to ascertain 
 more definitely what there really is for them to 
 found their schemes and hopes upon, and there- 
 fore to verify to themselves the reasons they 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 333 
 
 have for persisting, in assurance that the labour 
 will be far from wholly lost. And for that 
 assurance it is, at the very lowest, self-evident, 
 that there is at any rate such an efficacy in cul- 
 tivation, that it is quite certain a well cultivated 
 people cannot remain on the same degraded 
 moral level as a neglected ignorant one — or any 
 where near it. None of those even that value 
 such designs the least, ever pretend to foresee, 
 in the event of their being carried into effect, 
 an undiminished prevalence of rudeness and 
 brutality of manners, of delight in spectacles 
 and amusements of cruelty, of noisy revelry, of 
 sottish intemperance, or of disregard of charac- 
 ter. It is not pretended to be foreseen, that 
 the poorer classes will then continue to display 
 so much of that almost desperate improvidence 
 respecting their temporal means and prospects, 
 which has aggravated the calamities of the pre- 
 sent times. It is not predicted that an universal 
 school-discipline will bring up several millions 
 to the neglect, and many of them in an impudent 
 contempt, of attendance on the ministrations of 
 religion. The result will, at all hazards, by 
 every one's acknowledgment, be the contrary of 
 all this. 
 
 But more specifically : — The promoters of the 
 plans of popular education see a most important 
 advantage gained in the very outset, in the 
 obvious fact, that in their schools a very large 
 portion of time is employed well, that otherwise 
 
334 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 would infallibly be employed ill. Let any one 
 introduce himself into one of these places of 
 concourse, where there has been time to mature 
 the arrangements. He should not enter as an 
 important personage, in patronizing and judicial 
 state, as if to demand the respectful looks of 
 the whole tribe from their attention to their 
 printed rudiments and their slates ; but glide in 
 as a quiet observer, just to survey at his leisure 
 the character and operations of the scene. Un- 
 doubtedly he will descry here and there the 
 signs of inattention, weariness or vacancy, not 
 to say of perverseness. Even these individuals, 
 however, are out of the way of practical harm ; 
 and at the same time he will see a multitude of 
 youthful spirits acknowledging the duty of 
 directing their best attention to something alto- 
 gether foreign to their wild amusements ; of 
 making a rather protracted effort in one mode 
 or another of the strange business of thinking. 
 He will perceive in many the unequivocal indi- 
 cations of a serious and earnest effort made to 
 acquire, with the aid of visible signs and imple- 
 ments, a command of what is invisible and 
 immaterial. They are thus rising from the 
 mere animal state to tread in the precincts of 
 an intellectual economy; the economy of thought 
 and truth, in which they are to live for ever ; 
 and never, in all futurity, will they have to 
 regret this period and part of their employ- 
 ments. He will be delighted to think how 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 335 
 
 many regulated actions of the mind, how many 
 just ideas distinctly admitted, that were unknown 
 or unimpressed at the beginning of the day's 
 exercise, (and among these ideas, some to remind 
 them of God and their highest interest,) there 
 will have been by the time the busy and well 
 ordered company breaks up in the evening, and 
 leaves silence within these walls. He will not 
 indeed grow romantic in hope ; he knows the 
 nature of which these beings partake; knows 
 therefore that the desired results of this process 
 will but partially follow; but still rejoices to 
 think those partial results which will most cer- 
 tainly follow, will be worth incomparably more 
 than all they will have cost to the learners, or the 
 teachers, or the patrons. 
 
 Now let him, when he has contemplated this 
 scene, consider how the greatest part of this 
 numerous company would have been employed 
 during the same hours, whether of the sabbath 
 or other days, but for such a provision of means 
 for their instruction. And, for the contrast, he 
 has only to leave the school, and walk a mile 
 round the neighbourhood, in which it will be 
 very wonderful, (we may say this of most parts 
 of England,) if he shall not, in a populous dis- 
 trict, and on a fine day, meet with a great num- 
 ber of wretched disgusting imps, straggling or 
 in knots, in the activity of mischief and nuisance, 
 or at least the full cry of vile and profane lan- 
 guage ; with here and there, as a lord among 
 
336 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 them, an elder larger one growing fast into an 
 insolent adult blackguard. He may make the 
 comparison, quite sure that such as they are, 
 and so employed, would many now under the 
 salutary disciphne of yonder school have been, 
 but for its institution. But the two classes, so 
 beheld in contrast, might they not seem to 
 belong to two different nations ? Do they not 
 seem growing into two extremely different 
 orders of character ? Do they not even seem 
 preparing for different worlds in the final dis- 
 tribution ? 
 
 The friends of these designs for a general 
 and highly improved education, may proceed 
 further in this course of verifying to themselves 
 the grounds of their assurance of happy con- 
 sequences. A number of ideas, the most im- 
 portant that were ever formed in human thought, 
 or imparted to men from the Supreme Mind, 
 will be so taught in these institutions, that it is 
 absolutely certain they will be fixed irrevocably 
 in the minds of many of the pupils. It will be 
 as impossible to erase them from their memories 
 as to extinguish the stars. And in the case of 
 many, perhaps the majority, of these youthful 
 beings, advancing into the temptations of life, 
 these important ideas, thus fixed deep in their 
 souls, will distinctly present themselves to judg- 
 ment and conscience an incalculable number of 
 times. What a number, if the sum of all these 
 reminiscences, in all the minds now assembled 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 33? 
 
 in a numerous school, could be conjectured! 
 But if one in a hundred of these recollections, 
 if one in a thousand, shall have the efficacy 
 that it ought to have, who can compute the 
 amount of the good resulting from the instruc- 
 tion which shall have so enforced and fixed these 
 ideas that they shall infallibly be thus recollected? 
 And is it altogether out of reason to hope that 
 the desired efficacy will, oftener than once in a 
 thousand times, attend the luminous rising again 
 of a solemn idea to the view of the mind? Is 
 still less than this to be predicted for our un- 
 happy nature, while, however fallen, it is not 
 abandoned by the care of its Creator ? 
 
 The institutions themselves will gradually 
 improve in both the manner and the compass of 
 their discipline. They will acquire a more vigo- 
 rous mechanism, and a more decidedly intellec- 
 tual character. In this latter respect, it is but 
 comparatively of late years that schools for the 
 inferior classes have ventured any thing beyond 
 the humblest pretensions. Mental cultivation — 
 exercise of the judgment — habit of thinking — 
 advantage of knowledge — almost the word Edu- 
 cation itself — were terms which they were to be 
 reverently cautious of taking in vain. There would 
 have been an offensive sound in such phrases, as 
 seeming to betray somewhat of the impertinence 
 of a disposition, (for the idea of the practica- 
 hility of any such invasion would have been 
 scorned,) to encroach on a ground exclusively 
 
338 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 appropriate to the superior orders. Schools for 
 the poor were to be as httle as possible scho- 
 lastic. They were to be kept down to the lowest 
 level of the workshop, excepting perhaps in 
 one particular — that of working hard : for the 
 scholars were to throw time away rather than be 
 occupied with any thing beyond the merest rudi- 
 ments. The advocates and the petitioners for aid 
 of such schools, were to avow and plead how httle 
 it was that they pretended or presumed to teach. 
 The argument in their behalf was either to begin 
 or end with saying, that they taught only reading 
 and writing ; or if it could not be denied that 
 there was to be some meddling with the first 
 rules of arithmetic and grammar, — we may safely 
 appeal to some of these pleaders, whether they 
 did not, twenty or thirty years since, bring out 
 this addition with the management and hesitation 
 of a confession and apology. It is a prominent 
 characteristic of that happy revolution we have 
 spoken of as in commencement, that this aristo- 
 cratic notion of education is breaking up. The 
 theory of the subject is loosening into enlarge- 
 ment, and will cease by degrees to impose a 
 niggardly restriction on the extent of the culti- 
 vation proper to be attempted in schools for the 
 inferiors of the community. 
 
 As these institutions go on, augmenting in 
 number and improving in organization, their 
 pupils will bring their quality and efficacy to the 
 proof, as they grow to maturity, and go forth to 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 339 
 
 act their part in society. And there can be no 
 doubt, that while too many of them may be 
 mournful exemplifications of the power with 
 which the evil genius of the corrupt nature, com- 
 bined with the infection of a bad world, resists 
 the better influences of instruction, and may, 
 after the advantage of such an introductory stage, 
 be carried down toward the old debasement, a 
 very considerable proportion will take and per- 
 manently maintain a far higher ground. They 
 will have become imbued with an element, which 
 must put them in strong repulsion to that coarse 
 vulgar that will be sure to continue in existence, 
 in this country, long enough to be a trial of the 
 moral taste of this better cultivated race. It will 
 be seen that they cannot associate with it by 
 choice, and in the spirit of companionship. And 
 while they are thus withheld on their part, from 
 approximating, it may be hoped that, in certain 
 better disposed parts of that vulgar, there may 
 be a conversion of the repelling principle into an 
 impulse to approach and join them on their own 
 ground. There will be numbers among it who 
 cannot be so entirely insensate or perverse, as to 
 look with carelessness at the advantages obtained, 
 through the sole medium of personal improve- 
 ment, by those who had otherwise been exactly 
 on the same level of low resources and estima- 
 tion as themselves. The effect of this view on 
 pride, in some, and on better propensities, it 
 may be hoped, in others, will be to excite them 
 
 z2 
 
340 
 
 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE, 
 
 to make their way upward to a community which, 
 they will clearly see, could commit no greater 
 folly than to come downward to them. And we 
 will presume a friendly disposition in most of 
 those who shall have been raised to this higher 
 standing, to meet such aspirers and help them to 
 ascend. 
 
 And while they will thus draw upward the 
 less immovable and hopeless part of the mass 
 below them, they will themselves on the other 
 hand be placed, by the respectability of their 
 understanding and manners, within the influence 
 of the higher cultivation of the classes above 
 them; a great advantage, as we have taken 
 occasion to notice in a former stage of these 
 observations : — a great advantage, that is to say, 
 if the cultivation among those classes be gene- 
 rally of such a quality and measure that the 
 people could not be brought a few degrees 
 nearer to them without becoming, through the 
 effect of their example, more in love with sense, 
 knowledge, and propriety of conduct. For it 
 were somewhat too much of simplicity, perhaps, 
 to take it for quite a thing of course that the 
 people would always meet a display of intelli- 
 gence that would make them ashamed of their 
 own ignorance ; and such evidence, in manners 
 and character, of a liberal cultivation, as would 
 compel their respect when they made any ap- 
 proach to a communication with the classes 
 superior in possessions and station. If this 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 341 
 
 might have been assumed as a thing of course, 
 and if therefore it might have been confidently 
 reckoned on that the more improving of the 
 people would receive from the ranks above 
 them a salutary influence, similar to that which 
 we have been supposing they will themselves 
 exert on the vulgar mass below them, there 
 had been a happy omen for the community ; 
 and if it may not be so assumed, it is not the 
 fault of those who are seeking all means for 
 raising the people from their degradation. But 
 then it would be an admirable turn to make 
 the lower orders act beneficially on the higher. 
 And it is an important advantage likely to 
 accrue from the better education of the com- 
 mon people, that their rising attainments would 
 compel not a few of their superiors to look to 
 the state of their own mental pretensions, on 
 perceiving that this, at last, was becoming a 
 ground on which their precedence was to be 
 measured. Surely it would be a most excellent 
 thing, that they should find themselves thus 
 incommodiously pressed upon by the only cir- 
 cumstance, perhaps, that could make them 
 sensible there are more kinds of poverty than 
 that single one to which alone they had hitherto 
 attached ideas of disgrace ; and should be 
 forced to preserve that ascendency for which 
 wealth and station would formerly suffice, at 
 the cost, now, of a good deal more reading, 
 thinking, and general self-discipline. Would it 
 
342 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 be a worthy sacrifice, that to spare some sub- 
 stantial agriculturahsts, idle gentlemen, and 
 sporting or promenading ecclesiastics, such an 
 afflictive necessity, the actual tillers of the 
 ground, and the workers in manufacture and 
 mechanics, should continue to be kept in stupid 
 ignorance ? 
 
 It is very possible this may excite a smile, 
 as the threatening of a necessity or a danger to 
 these privileged persons, which it is thought 
 they may be comfortably assured is very remote. 
 This danger (namely, that a good many of 
 them, or rather of those who are coming in 
 the course of nature to succeed them in the 
 same rank, will find that its relative conse- 
 quence cannot be sustained but at a very con- 
 siderably higher pitch of mentaL qualification) 
 is threatened upon no stronger presages than 
 the following : — Allow us first to take it for 
 granted, that it is not a very protracted length 
 of time that is to pass away before the case 
 comes to be, that a large proportion of the 
 children of the lower classes are trained, through 
 a course of assiduous instruction and exercise 
 in the most valuable knowledge, during a series 
 of years, in schools which every thing possible 
 is done to render efficient. Then, if we include 
 in one computation all the time they will have 
 spent in real mental effort and acquirement 
 there, and all those pieces and intervals of time 
 which we may reasonably hope that many of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 343 
 
 them will improve to the same purpose in the 
 subsequent years, a very great number of them 
 will have employed, by the time they reach 
 middle age, many thousands of hours more than 
 people in their condition have heretofore done, 
 in a way the most directly tending to place 
 them greatly further on in whatever import- 
 ance intellect is to bear in society. And how 
 must we be estimating the natural capacities 
 of these inferior classes, or the perceptions of 
 the higher, not to foresee as a consequence, 
 that these latter will find their relative situa- 
 tion greatly altered, with respect to the measure 
 of knowledge and mental power requisite as 
 one most essential constituent of their supe- 
 riority, in order to command the unfeigned 
 deference of their inferiors ? 
 
 Our strenuous promoters of the schemes for 
 cultivating the minds of all the people, are 
 not afraid of professing to foresee, that when 
 schools, of that completely disciplinarian orga- 
 nization which they will gradually attain, shall 
 have become general, and shall be vigorously 
 seconded by all those auxiliary expedients for 
 popular instruction which are also in progress, 
 a very pleasing modification will become ap- 
 parent in the character, the moral colour, if 
 we might so express it, of the people's ordinary 
 employment. The young persons so instructed, 
 being appointed, for the most part, to the same 
 occupations to which they would have been 
 
344 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 destined had they grown up in utter ignorance 
 and vulgarity, are expected to give evidence 
 that the meanness, the debasement almost, 
 which had characterised many of those occu- 
 pations in the view of the more refined classes, 
 was in truth the debasement of the men more 
 than of the callings ; which will come to be 
 in more honourable estimation as associated 
 with the sense, decorum, and self-respect of 
 the performers, than they were while blended 
 and polluted with all the low habits, manners, 
 and language, of ignorance and vulgar gross- 
 ness. And besides, there is the consideration 
 of the different degrees of merit in the per- 
 formance itself ; and who will be the persons 
 most likely to excel, in the many branches of 
 workmanship and business which admit of being 
 better done in proportion to the degree of in- 
 telligence directed upon them ? And again, 
 who will be most in requisition for those offices 
 of management and superintendence, where 
 something must be confided to judgment and 
 discretion, and where the value is felt, (often 
 grievously felt from the want,) of some capacity 
 of combination and foresight ? 
 
 Such as these are among the subordinate 
 benefits reasonably, we might say infallibly, cal- 
 culated upon. Our philanthropists are confident 
 in foreseeing also, that very many of these 
 better educated young persons will be valuable 
 co-operators with all who may be more formally 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 345 
 
 employed in instruction^ against that ignorance 
 from which themselves have been so happily 
 saved ; will exert an influence, by their example 
 and the steady avowal of their principles, against 
 the vice and folly in their vicinity ; and will be 
 useful advisers of their neighbours in their per- 
 plexities, and sometimes moderators in their 
 discords. It is predicted, with a confidence so 
 much resting on general grounds of probability, 
 as hardly to need the instances already afforded 
 in various parts of the country to confirm it, 
 that here and there one of the well instructed 
 humbler class will become an able and useful 
 public teacher of the most important truth. It 
 is, in short, anticipated with delightful assurance, 
 that great numbers of those who shall go forth 
 from under the friendly guardianship which will 
 take the charge of their youthful minds, will be 
 examples through life and at its conclusion, of 
 the power and felicity of religion. 
 
 Here we can suppose it not improbable that 
 some one may, in pointed terms, put the ques- 
 tion, — Do you then, at last, mean to affirm that 
 you can, by the proposed course of discipline, 
 absolutely secure that effectual operation and 
 ascendency of religion in the mind, which shall 
 place it in the right condition toward God, and 
 in a state of fitness for passing, without fear 
 or danger, into the scenes of its future endless 
 existence ? 
 
346 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 Certainly many sentiments and modes of 
 expression, occurring in the preceding course 
 of observations, might have been sufficient to 
 preclude any such question. But let it be 
 asked, since there can be no difficulty to reply. 
 We do not affirm that any form of discipline, 
 the wisest and best in the power of the wisest 
 and best men to apply, is competent of itself 
 thus to subject the mind to the power of reli- 
 gion. On the contrary, we beheve that grand 
 effect can be accompUshed only by a special 
 influence of the Divine Being, operating by the 
 means applied in a well judged system of in- 
 struction, or, if he pleases, without them. But 
 next, it is perfectly certain, notwithstanding, 
 that the application of these human means will, 
 in a multitude of instances, be efficacious to that 
 most happy end. 
 
 This certainty arises from a few very plain 
 general considerations. The first is, that the 
 whole system of means appointed by the Al- 
 mighty to be employed as a human process for 
 presenting religion solemnly in view before 
 men's minds, and enforcing it upon them, is an 
 appointment expressly intended for working that 
 great effect which secures their final felicity, 
 though to what extent in point of number is 
 altogether unknown to the subordinate agents. 
 They are perfectly certain, in employing the 
 appointed expedients in prosecution of the work, 
 that they must be proceeding on the strength of 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. . 347 
 
 a positive relation subsisting between them and 
 results to be realized, in what instances, in what 
 measure, at what time, it shall please the sove- 
 reign Power. The appointment cannot be one 
 of mere exercise for the faculties and submissive 
 obedience of those who are summoned to be 
 active in its execution. 
 
 Accordingly, there are in the divine revelation 
 very many expHcit and animating assurances, 
 that their exertions shall certainly be in a mea- 
 sure effectual to the most important end desired. 
 And if these assurances are made in favour of 
 the exertions for inculcating religion generally, 
 that is on men of all conditions and ages, they 
 may be assumed as giving special encourage- 
 ment to those for impressing it on young minds, 
 before they can be preoccupied and hardened 
 by the depravities of the world. Their being 
 so assumed would be justified on the ground of 
 reason. But, besides, the authority itself, which 
 has assured a measure of success to religious 
 instruction as administered generally, has marked 
 with peculiar strength the promise of its success 
 as applied to the young ; thus affording rays of 
 hope which have in ten thousand instances 
 animated the diligence of pious parents, and the 
 other benevolent instructors of children. 
 
 There is also palpable and striking matter of 
 fact to the point, that an education in which 
 religious instruction shall be mingled in the 
 mental cultivation, will be rendered, in many 
 
348 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 instances, efficacious to the formation of a reli- 
 gious character. This obvious fact is, that a 
 much greater proportion of the persons so edu- 
 cated do actually become the subjects of reli- 
 gion, than of a similar number of those brought 
 up in ignorance and proffigacy. Take collec- 
 tively any number of families in which such an 
 education prevails, and the same number in 
 w^hich it does not, and follow the young persons 
 respectively into subsequent life. But any one 
 who hears the suggestion, feels there is no need 
 to wait the lapse of time and follow their actual 
 course. As instructed by what he has already 
 seen in society, he can go forward with them 
 prophetically, with perfect certainty that many 
 more of the one tribe than of the other, will 
 become persons not only of moral respectability 
 but of decided piety. Any one that should 
 assert respecting them that the probabilities are 
 equal and indifferent, would be considered as 
 sporting a wilful absurdity, or betraying that he 
 is one of those whose errand into this world it 
 is impossible to conjecture, since they can learn 
 nothing by what they see in it. And the expe- 
 rience which thus authorizes a perfect- confi- 
 dence of prediction, is evidence that, though 
 discipline must wholly disclaim an absolute 
 power to effect the great object in question, 
 there is, nevertheless, such a constitution of 
 things that it most certainly will, as an instru- 
 mental cause, in many instances effect it. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 349 
 
 The state of the matter, then, is very simple. 
 The Supreme Cause of men's being " made wise 
 to salvation," in appointing a system of means, 
 to be put by human activity in operation toward 
 this effect, has also appointed that in this opera- 
 tion they shall infaUibly be attended with a 
 measure of success in accomplishing that highest 
 good to which they are directed, — a measure 
 which was not to be accomplished in any other 
 way than by such means. So much he has 
 signified to men as an absolute certainty : but 
 then, he has connected this certainty in an arbi- 
 trary, and, as to our knowledge, indefinite 
 manner with the system. It is a certainty con- 
 nected with the system as taken generally and 
 comprehensively ; and which it is not given to us 
 to affix to the particular instances in which the 
 success will take place. It is a Divine Volition 
 suspended over the whole scene of cultivation ; 
 like a cloud from which we cannot tell where 
 precisely the shower to fertilize it will fall. The 
 agents under the Sovereign Dispenser are to 
 proceed on this positive assurance that the suc- 
 cess shall he somewhere, though they cannot 
 know that it will be in this one instance, or in 
 the other: " In the morning sow thy seed, and 
 in the evening withhold not thy hand ; for thou 
 knowest not whether shall prosper, this, or 
 that." If they rate the value of their agency 
 so high, as to hold it derogatory to their dig- 
 nity that any part of their labours should be 
 
350 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 performed under the condition of possibly being 
 unsuccessful, they may be assured that such is 
 not exactly the estimate of Him to whom they 
 look for the acceptance of their services, and for 
 the reward. 
 
 But it may be added, that the great majority 
 of those who are intent on the schemes for en- 
 lightening and reforming mankind, are enter- 
 taining a confident hope of the approach of a 
 period when the success will be far greater in 
 proportion to the measure of exertion, in every 
 department of the system of instrumentahty for 
 that grand object. We cherish this confidence, 
 not on the strength of any pretension to be able 
 to resolve prophetic emblems and numbers into 
 precise dates and events of the present and 
 approaching times. It rests on a much more 
 general mode of combining the very extraordi- 
 nary indications of the period we live in, with the 
 substantial purport of the divine predictions. 
 There unquestionably gleams forth, through the 
 plainer lines, and through the mystical imagery 
 of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which 
 the application of the truths of religion to men's 
 minds will be irresistible. And what should 
 more naturally be interpreted as one of the 
 dawning signs of its approach, than a sudden 
 wide movement at once to clear their intellects 
 and bring the heavenly light to shine close upon 
 them; accompanied by a prodigious convulsion 
 in the old system of the world, which hardly 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 351 
 
 recognised in the inferior millions the very 
 existence of souls to need or be worth such an 
 illumination ? The fearful spectacle of disorder, 
 and crime, and wretchedness, of all kinds, which 
 glares around us in these times, is, in its excess 
 beyond what was visible in those of our fore- 
 fathers, the accumulated result, bursting loose 
 in the breaking up, of that execrable system. 
 Viewed in itself this outbreak of evil might well 
 seem to portend any thing rather than a grand 
 improvement in the state of a nation or of 
 mankind ; but it is to be regarded as a pheno- 
 menon inevitably attendant on that breaking up 
 of the system by the very means of the evils 
 which it had accumulated ; and that catastrophe 
 was absolutely necessary to open and clear the 
 field for operations on the great scale against 
 those evils themselves, and to give scope and 
 means for the advancement toward a better 
 condition of humanity. 
 
 The labourers in the institutions for instruct- 
 ing the young descendants of an ill-fated gene- 
 ration, may often regret to perceive how little 
 the process is as yet informed with the energy 
 which is ultimately to pervade the world. But 
 let them regard as one great undivided economy 
 and train of operation, these initiatory efforts 
 and all that is to follow, till that time " when 
 all shall know the Lord;" and take by antici- 
 pation, as in fraternity with the happier future 
 labourers, their just share of that ultimate 
 
352 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 triumph. Those active spirits, in the happier 
 stages, will look back with this sentiment of 
 kindred and complacency to those who sustained 
 the earlier toils of the good cause, and did not 
 suffer their zeal to languish under the compara- 
 tive smallness of their success. 
 
 We shall conclude with a few sentences in 
 the way of reply to another question, which we 
 can surmise there may be persons ready to ask, 
 after this long iteration of the assertion of the 
 necessity of knowledge to the common people. 
 The question would be to this effect : What do 
 you, all this while, mean to assign as the 
 measure of knowledge proper for the people to 
 be put in possession of? — for you do not specify 
 the kinds, nor limit the extent: you talk in 
 vague general terms of mental improvement; 
 you leave the whole matter indefinite ; and for 
 all that appears, the people are never to know 
 when they know enough. 
 
 It is answered, that we do leave the extent 
 undefined, and should request to be informed 
 where, and why, the line of circumscription and 
 exclusion should be drawn. 
 
 Is it, we could really wish to know, a point 
 at all yet decided, wherein consist the value and 
 importance of the human nature ? Any liberal 
 scheme for its universal cultivation is met by 
 such a jealous parsimony toward the common 
 people, such a ready imputation of wild theory. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 353 
 
 such protesting declamations against the mischief 
 of practically applying abstract principles, such 
 an undisguised or betrayed precedence given to 
 mere interests of state, and those perhaps very 
 mean ones, before all others, and such whimsical 
 prescriptions for making a salutary compound 
 of a little knowledge and much ignorance, — 
 that it might seem to be doubtful, after all, 
 whether the human nature, in the mass of man- 
 kind at least, be of any such consistence^ or 
 for any such purpose, as is affirmed in our com- 
 mon-places on the subject. It is uniformly 
 assumed in the language of divines, and of the 
 philosophers in most repute, that the worth, 
 the dignity, the importance of man, are in his 
 rational, immortal nature ; and that therefore 
 the best condition of thai is his true felicity 
 and glory, and the object chiefly to be aimed at 
 in all that is done by him, and for him, on earth. 
 But whether this should be regarded as any 
 thing more than the elated faith of ascetics, a 
 fine dogma of academics, or a theme for show 
 in the pomp of moral rhetoric ? For we often 
 see, and it is very striking to see, how principles 
 which are suffered to pass for infallible truth 
 while content to stay within the province of 
 speculation, and to be pronounced as mere doc- 
 trine, may be disowned and repelled when they 
 come demanding to have their appropriate place 
 and influence in the practical sphere. Even 
 many pretended advocates of Christianity, who 
 
 A A 
 
354 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 in naming certain principles would seem to make 
 them of the very essence of the moral part of 
 that religion, and, in discoursing merely as reli- 
 gionists, will insist on their vital importance, 
 will yet shuffle and equivocate about these prin- 
 ciples, and in effect set them aside, when they 
 are attempted to be applied to some of their 
 most legitimate uses. If, for example, these 
 religionists are among the servile adherents of 
 corrupted institutions and iniquity invested with 
 power, they will easily find accommodating in- 
 terpretations, or pleas of exemption from the 
 direct authority, of some of the most sacred 
 maxims of their professed religion. Serve the 
 true God when we happen to be in the right 
 place; but at all events we must attend our 
 master to pay homage in the temple of Rimmon, 
 or, should he please to require it, that of 
 Moloch, — with this signal difference from the 
 ancient instance of peccant servility, that whereas 
 in that case pardon for it was implored, in the 
 present case a merit is made of the sycophancy 
 and the idolatry. Unless the principles of Chris- 
 tianity will acknowledge the supremacy of some- 
 thing else than Christianity, in the mode of their 
 application to estimate the importance of the 
 popular mind, they may take their repose in 
 bodies of divinity, sermons, catechisms, systems 
 of ethics, or wherever they can find a place. 
 
 But is it really admitted, as a great principle 
 for practical application, that the mind, the 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 355 
 
 intelligent imperishable existence, is the su- 
 premely valuable thing in man ? It is then, admit- 
 ted, inevitably, that the discipline, the correction, 
 the improvement, the maturation of this spiritual 
 being, to the highest attainable degree, is the 
 great object to be desired by men, for themselves 
 and one another. That is to say, that know- 
 ledge^ cultivation, salutary exercise, wisdom, all 
 that can conduce to the perfection of the mind, 
 form the state in which it is due to man's nature 
 that he should be endeavoured to be placed. But 
 then, this is due to his nature by an absolutely 
 general law. He cannot be so circumstanced 
 in the order of society that this shall not be 
 due to it. No situation in which the arrange- 
 ments of the world, or say of Providence, may 
 place him, can constitute him a specific kind of 
 creature, to which is no longer fit and necessary 
 that which is necessary to the well being of 
 man considered generally, as a spiritual, immor- 
 tal nature. The essential law of this nature 
 cannot be abrogated by men's being placed in 
 humble and narrow circumstances, in which a 
 very large portion of their time and exertions 
 are required for mere subsistence. This acci- 
 dent of a confined situation is no more a reason 
 why their minds should not require the best 
 attainable cultivation, than would be the circum- 
 stance that the body in which a man's mind is 
 lodged happens to be of smaller dimensions than 
 those of other men. 
 
 aa2 
 
356 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 That under the disadvantages of this humble 
 situation they cannot acquire all the mental 
 improvement desirable for the perfection of 
 their inteUigent nature, that the situation ren- 
 ders it impracticable, is quite another matter. 
 So far as this inhibition is real and absolute, 
 that is, so far as it must remain after the best 
 exertion of human wisdom and means in their 
 favour, it must be submitted to as one of the 
 infelicities of their allotment by Providence. 
 What we are insisting on is, that since by the law 
 of their nature there is to them the same general 
 necessity as to any other human beings, of that 
 which is essential to the wellbeing of the mind, 
 they should be advanced in this improvement 
 as far as they can; that is, as far as a wise and 
 benevolent disposition of the community can 
 make it practicable for them to be advanced. 
 
 It is an odious hypocrisy to talk of the narrow 
 limits to this advancement as an ordination of 
 Providence, when a well ordered constitution 
 and management of the community might en- 
 large those limits. At least it is so in the 
 just'ifiers of that social system : those who de- 
 plore and condemn it may properly speak of the 
 appointment of Providence, but in another sense; 
 as they would speak of the dispensations of 
 Providence in consolation to a man iniquitously 
 imprisoned or impoverished. 
 
 Let the people then be advanced in the im- 
 provement of their rational nature as far as they 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 357 
 
 can. A greater degree of this progress will 
 be more for their welfare than a less. This 
 might be shown in forms of illustration easily 
 conceived, and as easily vindicated from the 
 imputation of extravagance in the conception, 
 by instances which every observer may have 
 met with in real life. A poor man, cultivated in 
 a small degree, has acquired a few just ideas of 
 an important subject, which lies out of the scope 
 of his daily employments for subsistence. Be 
 that subject what it may, if those ideas are of 
 any use to him, by what principle would one 
 idea more, or two, or twenty, be of no use to 
 him ? Of no use ! — when all the thinking world 
 knows, that every additional clear idea of a s^- 
 ject is valuable by a ratio of progress much 
 greater than that of the mere numerical in- 
 crease, and that by a large addition of ideas a man 
 triples the value of those with which he began. 
 He has read a small meagre tract on the subject, 
 or perhaps only an article in a magazine, or an 
 essay in the literary column of a provincial 
 newspaper. Where would be the harm, on sup- 
 position he can fairly afford the time, in con- 
 sequence of husbanding it for this very purpose, 
 of his reading a well written concise book, which 
 would give him a clear, comprehensive view of 
 the subject ? 
 
 But perhaps another branch of the tree of 
 knowledge bends its fruit temptingly to his 
 hand. And if he should indulge, and gain a 
 
358 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 tolerably clear notion of one more interesting 
 subject, (still punctually regardful of the duties 
 of his ordinary vocation,) where, we say again, 
 is the harm ? Converse with him ; observe his 
 conduct; compare him with a wretched clown 
 in a neighbouring dwelling ; and say that he is 
 the worse for having thus much of the provision 
 for a mental subsistence. But if thus much 
 has contributed greatly to his advantage, why 
 should he be interdicted still further attain- 
 ments? Are you alarmed for him, if he will 
 needs go the length of acquiring some know- 
 ledge of geography, the solar system, and the 
 history of his own country and of the ancient 
 world?* Let him proceed; supply him gratui- 
 tously with some of the best books on these 
 subjects; and if you shall converse with him 
 again, after another year or two of his progress, 
 and compare him once more with the ignorant, 
 stunted, cankered beings in his vicinity, you will 
 see whether there be any thing essentially at 
 variance between his narrow circumstances in life 
 and his mental enlargement. 
 
 * These denominations of knowledge, so strange as they 
 will to some persons appear, in such a connexion, we have 
 ventured to write from observing, that they stand in the 
 schemes of elementary instruction in the missionary schools 
 for the children of the natives of Bengal. But of course we 
 are to acknowledge, that the vigorous, high-toned spirits of 
 those Asiatic idolaters are adapted to receive a much superior 
 style of cultivation to any of which the feeble progeny of 
 England can be supposed to be capable. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 359 
 
 You are willing, perhaps, that he should know 
 a few facts of ancient times, and can, though 
 with hesitation, trust him with Goldsmith's His- 
 tories of Greece and Rome. But if he should 
 then by some means find his way into such a 
 work as that of Rollin (of moral and instructive 
 tendency, however defective otherwise), or be- 
 tray that he covets an acquaintance with those 
 of Gillies, or even Mitford, — it is all over with 
 him for being an useful member of society in 
 his humble situation. You would consent (may 
 we suppose ?) to his reading a slender abridg- 
 ment of voyages and travels; but what is to 
 become of him if nothing less will content him 
 than the whole-length story of Captain Cook ? 
 He will direct, it is to be hoped, some of his 
 best attention to the supreme subject of religion. 
 And you would quite approve of his perusing 
 some useful tracts, some manuals of piety, some 
 commentary on a catechism, some volume of 
 serious plain discourses ; but he is absolutely 
 undone if his ambition should rise at length to 
 Barrow, or Howe, or Jeremy Taylor.* He 
 
 * It should be unnecessary to observe, that the object in 
 citing any names in this paragraph was, to give a somewhat 
 definite cast to the description of the supposed progress of the 
 plebeian self-instructor. The principal of them are mentioned 
 simply as being of such note in their departments, that he 
 would be likely to hear of them among the first of the authors 
 to be sought if he were aspiring to something beyond his pre- 
 viously humble and abridged reading. The reader may sub- 
 stitute for these names any others, of the superior order, that 
 he may think more proper to stand in their place. It would 
 
360 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 is by all means, you say, to be kept out of all 
 such pernicious company, in which it is impos- 
 sible he can learn any lesson but one, — to hate 
 good morals, just laws, virtuous kings, a polished 
 and benevolent gentry, and learned and pious 
 teachers of religion. Well ; let him be kept as 
 far as possible from the mischief of all such 
 books and knowledge ; let him hardly know that 
 there was an ancient world, or that there are 
 on the globe such regions and wonders as 
 travellers have described ; or that a reason and 
 eloquence above the pitch of some plain homily 
 ever illustrated and enforced religion. Let him 
 keep clear of all such evil communications ; and 
 then, (since we were expressly making it a con- 
 dition, that he can fairly spare the time for such 
 reading from his common employment,) and 
 then, — he will have just so much the more time 
 for needless sleep, for discussing the trifles and 
 characters of the neighbourhood, or, (supposing 
 him still of a religious habit,) for tiring his friends 
 and family with the well meant but very unat- 
 tractive iteration of a few serious phrases and 
 remarks, of which they will have long since 
 learnt to anticipate the last word from hearing 
 
 therefore be animadversion or ridicule mispent, to make the 
 charge of extravagance on this imagined course of a plain 
 man's reading, with a specific reference to the authors here 
 named, as if it had been meant that precisely these, by a 
 peculiar selection, were to be the authors he may be supposed 
 to peruse, and in perusing, to waste his time and destroy his 
 sense of duty. 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 361 
 
 the first. Advantages like these he certainly 
 may enjoy in consequence of his preclusion from 
 the higher and wider field of ideas. But how- 
 ever valuable these may be in themselves, they 
 will not ensure his being better qualified for the 
 common business and proprieties of his station, 
 than another man in the same sphere of life 
 whose mind has acquired that larger reach which 
 we are describing. It is no more than what 
 we have repeatedly seen exemplified, when we 
 represent this transgressor into the prohibited 
 field as probably acquitting himself with exem- 
 plary regularity and industry in his allotted 
 labours, and even in this very capacity preferred 
 by the men of business to the illiterate tools in 
 his neighbourhood ; nay, most likely preferred, in 
 the more technical sense of the word, to the 
 honourable, but often suflSciently vexatious office, 
 of directing and superintending the operations of 
 those tools. 
 
 And where, now, is the evil he is incurring 
 or causing, during this progress -of violating, 
 step after step, the circumscription by which 
 the aristocratic compasses were again and again, 
 with small reluctant extensions to successive 
 greater distances, defining the scope of the 
 knowledge proper for a man of his condition ? 
 It is a bad thing, is it, that he has a multi- 
 plicity of ideas to relieve the taedium incident 
 to the sameness of his course of life ; that, 
 with many things which had else been but 
 
362 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 mere insignificant facts, or plain dry notions 
 and principles, he has a variety of interesting 
 associations ; like woodbines and roses wreath- 
 ing round the otherwise bare ungraceful forms 
 of erect stones or withered trees ; that the 
 world is an interpreted and intelligible volume 
 before his eyes ; that he has a power of ap- 
 plying himself to think of what it becomes at 
 any time necessary for him to understand. Is 
 it a judgment upon him for his temerity, in 
 " seeking and intermeddling with wisdom " with 
 which he had no business, that he has so much 
 to impart to his children as they are growing 
 up, and that if some of them are already come 
 to maturity, they know not where to find a 
 man to respect more than their father ? Or 
 if he takes a part in the converse and devo- 
 tional exercises of religious society, is no one 
 there the better for the clearness and the ple- 
 nitude of his thoughts and the propriety of his 
 expression ? — But there would be no end of 
 the preposterous suppositions fairly attachable 
 to the notion, that the mental improvement 
 of the common people has some proper limit 
 of arbitrary prescription, on the ground simply 
 of their being the common people, and quite 
 distinct from the restriction which their cir- 
 cumstances may invincibly impose on their 
 abiUty. 
 
 Taken in this latter view, we acknowledge 
 that theu* condition would be a subject for most 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 363 
 
 melancholy contemplation, if we did not hope 
 for better times. The benevolent reflector, 
 when sometimes led to survey in thought the 
 endless myriads of beings with minds, within 
 the circuit of a country like this, will have a 
 momentary vision of them as they would be 
 if all improved to the highest mental condition 
 to which it is naturally possible for them to be 
 exalted ; a magnificent spectacle ; but it in- 
 stantly fades and vanishes. And the sense is 
 so powerfully upon him of the unchangeable 
 economy of the world, which, even if the fairest 
 fondest visions of the millennium itself were 
 realized, would still render such a thing actually 
 impossible, that he hardly regrets the bright 
 scene was but a beautiful cloud, and melts away. 
 His imagination then descends to view this 
 immense tribe of rational beings in another, 
 and comparatively moderate state, of the culti- 
 vation of their faculties, a state not one third 
 part so lofty as that in which he had beheld 
 all the individuals improved to the highest 
 degree of which each is naturally capable ; and 
 he thinks, that the condition of man's abode 
 on earth might admit of their being raised to 
 this elevation. But he soon sees, that till a 
 mighty change shall take place in the system 
 according to which the nations are managing 
 their affairs, this too is impossible; and with 
 regret he sees even this inferior ideal spec- 
 tacle pass away, to rest on an age in distant 
 
364 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 prospect. At last he takes his imaginary stand 
 on what he feels to be a very low level of the 
 supposed improvement of the general popular 
 mind ; and he says. Thus much, at the least, 
 should be a possibility allowed by the circum- 
 stances of the people under any tolerable order 
 of the disposition of national interests ; — and 
 then he turns to look down on an actual con- 
 dition in which care, and toil, and distress, 
 render it utterly impossible for a great propor- 
 tion of the people to reach, or even approach, 
 this his last and lowest conception of what the 
 state of their minds ought to be. 
 
 In spite of all the optimists, it is a grievous 
 reflection, after the race has had on earth so 
 many thousands of years for attaining its most 
 advantageous condition there, that all the ex- 
 perience, the philosophy, the science, the art, 
 the power acquired by mind over matter, — that 
 all the contributions of all departed and all 
 present spirits and bodies, yes, and all religion 
 too, should have come but to this; — to this, 
 that in what is self-adulated as the most favoured 
 and improved nation of all terrestrial space and 
 time, a vast proportion of the people are ab- 
 solutely found in a condition which confines 
 them, with all the rigour of necessity, to the 
 veriest childhood of intelligent existence, with- 
 out its innocence. 
 
 But at the very same time, and while com- 
 passion is rising at such a view, there comes 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 365 
 
 in on the other hand the reflection, that 
 even in the actual state of things, there are a 
 considerable number of the people who might 
 acquire a valuable share of improvement which 
 they do not. Great numbers of them, grown 
 up, waste by choice, and multitudes of children 
 waste through utter neglect, a large quantity 
 of precious time, which their narrow circum- 
 stances still leave free from the iron dominion 
 of necessity. And they will waste it, it is cer- 
 tain that they will, till education shall have 
 become general, and much more vigorous in 
 discipline. If through a miracle there were 
 to come down on this country, with a sudden 
 delightful affluence of temporal melioration, re- 
 sembling the vernal transformation from the 
 dreariness of winter, an universal prosperity, 
 so that all should be placed in ease and plenty, 
 it would require another miracle to prevent this 
 benignity of heaven from turning to a dreadful 
 mischief. What would the great tribe of the 
 uneducated people do with the half of their 
 time, which we will suppose that such a state 
 would give to their voluntary disposal ? Every 
 one can answer infallibly, that the far greater 
 number of them would consume it in idleness, 
 vanity, or abomination. Educate them, then, 
 bring them under a grand process of intel- 
 lectual and moral reformation ; — or, in all 
 circumstances and events, calamitous or pros- 
 perous, they are still a race made in vain ! 
 
366 ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 
 
 In taking leave of the subject, we wish to 
 express, in strong terms, the applause and 
 felicitations due to those excellent individuals, 
 found here and there, who in very humble 
 circumstances, and perhaps with very little 
 advantage of education in their youth, have 
 been excited to a strenuous, continued exertion 
 for the improvement of their minds ; by which 
 they have made, (the unfavourable situation 
 considered,) admirable attainments, which are 
 now passing with inestimable worth into the 
 instruction of their families, and a variety 
 of usefulness within their sphere. They have 
 nobly struggled with their threatened destiny, 
 and have overcome it. When they think, 
 with regret, how confined, after all, is their 
 portion of knowledge, as compared with the 
 rich possessions of those who have had from 
 their infancy all facilities and the amplest time 
 for its acquirement, let them be consoled by 
 reflecting, that the value of mental progress 
 is not to be measured solely by the quantity 
 of knowledge possessed, but partly, and indeed 
 still more, by the corrective, invigorating effect 
 produced on the mental powers by the resolute 
 exertions made in attaining it. And therefore, 
 since, under their great disadvantages, it has 
 required a much greater degree of this reso- 
 lute exertion in them to force their way vic- 
 toriously out of ignorance, than it has required 
 in those who have had every thing in their 
 
ON POPULAR IGNORANCE. 367 
 
 favour to * make a long free career over the 
 field of knowledge, they may be assured they 
 have obtained a greater benefit in proportion 
 to the measure of what they have attained to 
 know. This persistence of a determined will to 
 do what has been so difficult to be done, has 
 infused a peculiar energy into the exercise of 
 their powers ; a valuable point of compen- 
 sation, to be set against the circumstance, that 
 they have not equally with the ampler posses- 
 sors of knowledge, the advantage of illustrating 
 and perfecting one principle of it by the acces- 
 sion of many others. Let them persevere in 
 this worthy self-discipline, appropriate to the 
 introductory period of an endless mental life. 
 Let them go on to complete the proof how 
 much a mind incited to a high purpose may 
 triumph over a depression of its external con- 
 dition ; — but solemnly taking care, that all their 
 improvements may tend to such a result, that 
 at length the rigour of their lot and the con- 
 finement of mortality itself bursting at once 
 from around them, may give them to those 
 intellectual revelations, that everlasting sun- 
 light of the soul, in which the truly wise will 
 expand all their faculties in a happier economy. 
 
A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE ' 
 
 PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 IN INDIA; 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OF WHICH WAS DELIVERED 
 AT THE ANNUAL MEETING 
 
 OP 
 
 A MISSIONARY SOCIETY, 
 
 IN 1818. 
 
 B B 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 It is very true, as several friends have suggested, 
 that the following Discourse might, on some accounts, 
 have been more properly denominated an Essay. But, 
 as the series of thoughts of which it consists was actually 
 addressed, in the order in which they here occur, though 
 with much less amplification, to a public assembly, and 
 as somewhat of the manner of expression proper to such 
 an address is retained in the composition, the author 
 thinks there might be an appearance of literary affecta- 
 tion in giving it any other title than one describing it in 
 that character. 
 
ON THE 
 
 PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 IN INDIA. 
 
 Judges v. 23. 
 
 They came not to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of the Lord against the mighty. 
 
 The practice may be too frequent, of accom- 
 modating objects and effects in the world of 
 nature, the relations and transactions in that 
 of human society, and the merely secular facts 
 of the scripture history, to the purpose of repre- 
 senting, in the way of formal and protracted 
 similitude, the truths and interests of religion. 
 We may observe, however, that it seems to the 
 honour of rehgion that so many things can be 
 accommodated to its illustration, without any 
 recourse to that perverted ingenuity which 
 fancifully descries or invents resemblances. It 
 is an evident and remarkable fact, that there 
 is a certain principle of correspondence to reli- 
 gion throughout the economy of the world. 
 
 BB 2 
 
372 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 Things bearing an apparent analogy to its 
 truths, obviously or more remotely, present 
 themselves on all sides to a thoughtful mind. 
 He that made all things for himself appears to 
 have willed that they should be a great system 
 of emblems, reflecting or shadowing that system 
 of principles which is the true theory concerning 
 Him, and our relations to Him. So that reli- 
 gion, standing up in grand parallel to an in- 
 finity of things, receives their testimony and 
 homage, and speaks with a voice which is echoed 
 by the creation. 
 
 It may therefore be permitted us to fix upon 
 a circumstance in the secular conduct of an 
 ancient people, as adapted to suggest more than 
 it essentially contains, and to carry our thoughts, 
 by analogy, to a kind of duty and of delin- 
 quency more directly related to religion. Under 
 this license our subject is introduced by a sen- 
 tence pronounced, we may presume at the 
 divine dictation, in reproach of a refusal to co- 
 operate in a different kind of service from that 
 which we have to recommend on the present 
 occasion. 
 
 The negative form of the charge, — They came 
 not to the help of the Lord, — may remind us 
 of the grievous fact, that by far the greater 
 number of the judicial negative statements in 
 the Bible, respecting the conduct of men, are 
 accusations. The mention that they did not do 
 the thing in question is very generally the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 373 
 
 implied assertion that they ought to have done 
 it. And the consideration becomes still more im- 
 pressive, on recollection that we are told, that 
 the last negative statement to be uttered on 
 earth, and uttered by the greatest voice, will be 
 with an emphasis of condemnation ; '^ Inasmuch 
 as ye did it not — ." 
 
 Observe how much guilt there may be in 
 mere omission, and that, even though we should 
 suppose the persons, who decline the one spe- 
 cific duty, to be occupied, while neglecting it, in 
 employments in themselves innocent and lau- 
 dable. It is very possible that the people of 
 whose absence from the appointed scene of 
 action we have just read the accusing record, 
 might have brought a plea on this ground, 
 against the justice of the consequent maledic- 
 tion. They might perhaps have had to say, 
 that they were diligently prosecuting the labours 
 of their rural economy, which there might be, 
 at the time, particular reasons why they should 
 not suspend ; or that they were intent on certain 
 plans for rectifying disorders in their society ; or 
 tkat they were employing the time in some reli- 
 gious solemnity, perhaps imploring the interven- 
 tion of heaven in the alarming crisis, under a per- 
 suasion of the sufficiency of the Divine Power 
 independently of human means. But no such 
 pleas would have availed, to avert the vindictive 
 sentence which the prophetess was instructed 
 to pronounce on their refusal to do that one 
 
374 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 thing which the summons of unquestionable 
 authority had signified to be, in that juncture, 
 their precise duty. Such allegations might in- 
 deed have been dishonestly made, as an attempt 
 to veil selfishness and cowardice, the real causes 
 probably for withholding the required service ; 
 and then the hypocrisy would have incurred a 
 prompt exposure and a severity of rebuke ; but 
 even had they been made sincerely, and proved 
 to be true, they would not have arrested or 
 revoked the condemnation. The appeal of the 
 defaulters would have been silenced by the 
 decision, that it is of the essence of disobedience 
 and rebelHon to assume to make commutations 
 and substitutions of duty, to transfer obligation 
 to where it would be less inconvenient that it 
 should be enforced, and to affect to render, in 
 the form of preferred and easier services, an 
 equivalent for the obedience which the righteous 
 and supreme authority has distinctly required 
 to be rendered in that harder service which is 
 evaded. 
 
 Supposing these people to have really been of 
 a quiet and harmless disposition, and assiduous 
 in the useful vocations of ordinary life, there 
 may appear, notwithstanding the urgency of the 
 occasion, something hard in the alternative they 
 were placed in, of suddenly abandoning their 
 homes to rush into the perils of battle, or suffer- 
 ing all that was denounced in so heavy an exe- 
 cration. And, in the survey of the many forms 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 375 
 
 into which human duty has be|li diversified by 
 occasions, as displayed in the Bible and other 
 records, we see many situations of exceeding 
 hardship — no reflection implied on that Autho- 
 rity which prescribed their arduous exercises. 
 The great contest against Evil, in all its modes 
 of invasion of this world, (but our reference is 
 chiefly to those requiring men's resistance in the 
 religious capacity,) has been a service assigned 
 in every possible difference of circumstance and 
 proportion ; and some men's shares have in- 
 volved a vehemence of exertion, or weight of 
 suffering, which we look upon with wonder and 
 almost with terror. We shudder to think of 
 mortals like ourselves having been brought into 
 such fearful dilemmas between obedience and 
 guilt. We shrink from placing ourselves but in 
 imagination under such tests of fidelity to God 
 and a good cause. The painful retrospective 
 sympathy with those agents and sufferers termi- 
 nates in self-congratulation, that their allotment 
 of duty has not been ours. The tacit sentiment 
 is, I am very glad I can be a good man on less 
 severe conditions. 
 
 And the sentiment is justified by the laws of 
 our nature. It may become an emotion of piety, 
 and rise in gratitude to God for having appointed 
 us to a less formidable service. But it may also 
 be indulged in such a manner as to betray us 
 into dangerous delusion. In pleasing ourselves 
 with the thought of our exemption from an 
 
376 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 order of duties involving the sacrifice of every 
 thing gratifying in mortal existence but a good 
 conscience, — duties to be performed at the cost 
 of suffering oppressive and unmitigated toil, pain, 
 want, reproach, loss of liberty and even of life 
 itself, — duties imposing such a trial of fidelity as 
 confessors and martyrs have sustained, — we may 
 be led into a wrong estimate of the difference 
 between their situation and ours, as if our obli- 
 gations were constituted under an essentially 
 different economy. With an unthinking self- 
 assurance that the satisfaction we feel is grati- 
 tude to God for a less rigorous appointment, we 
 may be making exemptions for ourselves which 
 he has never made. Delighted that, at the easy 
 price of only being thankful to him, we are al- 
 lowed to take so much indulgence, we may with 
 a deluded confidence widen out the sphere of 
 privilege beyond one point, and beyond another, 
 where he has marked the boundary ; with always 
 the strongest propensity to this enlargement on 
 that side where the hardest duties are placed ; 
 till the mind at length reposes in a scheme of 
 duty adjusted, on its own authority, to its own 
 convenience, and far from coincident with that 
 which has been dictated by the divine will. 
 
 There is delusion in our self-congratulation 
 at the contrast between what is enjoined on us 
 and the severer duties imposed on some of our 
 great Master's subjects, if we do not perceive 
 that, nevertheless, the matter of our required 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 377 
 
 service is of the very same substance, (w^ith only 
 a favourable difference of mode and proportion,) 
 as that which appears to us of such rigour in 
 theirs. There is delusion, if vv^e are permitted 
 to escape from the habitual sense of being placed, 
 in character of the servants of God, under the 
 duty and necessity of an intense moral war- 
 fare, against powers of evil as real and palpable 
 as ever were encountered in the field of battle. 
 Not to feel ourselves pressed upon by resistless 
 evidence and admonition of this, is an utter igno- 
 rance or oblivion of our commission on earth. 
 And the natural consequence is a fate like that 
 of strangers thoughtlessly straying and surren- 
 dering themselves to sleep, in a place where it is 
 a law of the barbarian inhabitants to sacrifice all 
 strangers to their infernal gods. 
 
 Yet there is in general so faint an impression 
 of this fact, of an urgent necessity of war till 
 death, as the grand business and obligation of 
 life, that, to the greater number of the persons 
 to whom we offer illustrations of christian topics, 
 no language sounds so idly, no figures appear so 
 insignificant, no forms of common-place so " stale, 
 flat, and unprofitable," as those which represent 
 in a military character the exertions by which 
 men are to evince themselves the servants of God. 
 An appeal might safely be made to the conscious- 
 ness of many hearers and readers, whether at 
 the recurrence of these images in any rehgious 
 reference, they have not a marked sense of 
 
378 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 insipidity strongly tending to disgust, caused in 
 some degree, we may allow, by a too frequent 
 iteration, but still more by the impression of un- 
 meaningness and futility in employing such terms 
 for such a subject. 
 
 It is striking to observe, at the same time, 
 how some of the persons who are thus tired to 
 loathing of these images in their moral and spi- 
 ritual application, will feel their latent energy 
 beginning to stir and breathe at similar lan- 
 guage and figures coming before them in literal 
 representation of war. Most of the excitable 
 class of spirits, whether in youth or much 
 later life, can be kindled to enthusiasm by the 
 grand imagery of battles and heroic achieve- 
 ments. The terms of martial metaphor which, 
 perhaps in a religious discourse, are inflicting 
 dulness and disgust in a representation of the 
 "spiritual conflict," "the christian warfare," may 
 relieve them by suddenly turning to their literal 
 sense, and diverting the mind away to an ima- 
 gined scene of conflict ; and it shall feel a proud 
 elation in passing from the vapid story of a 
 spiritual war, to the magnificence of the combats 
 which are displayed in fire and blood to the 
 eyes, and in thunder to the ears. The attention 
 being wholly withdrawn from the strain which 
 is perhaps still proceeding, in words no longer 
 sensibly heard, to figure out the christian soldier, 
 the imagination shall follow the track of some 
 brilliant mortal, of history or fiction, through 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 379 
 
 scenes of tumult, and terror, and noble daring ; 
 and shall adore him as beheld exulting unhurt 
 in victory, or as expiring in the manner in which 
 it is poetically graceful for a hero to fall. The 
 enthusiast, while sitting still and abstracted, may 
 be at moments enchanted into a kind of person- 
 ation of the character, and glow with emotion in 
 the mimic fancy of acting himself a part so splen- 
 did. And these scenes of fury and destruction, 
 thus fervidly imagined, shall really be deemed 
 the subHmest exhibitions of man, in which human 
 energy approaches nearest to a rivalry with the 
 *' immortals," — for the epic diction of paganism 
 may naturally be the expression of sentiments 
 fired by its spirit. "Immortal," may be also 
 the word which he is silently pronouncing in 
 his adoration of the personage whose career he 
 is pursuing in reverie ; conformably to that ca- 
 price of human madness, which has determined 
 the special selection of such an epithet for be- 
 decking the most active dealers in death, and 
 whose exposure to be smitten by it is an inevit- 
 able condition of their inflicting it. 
 
 If, in this inflamed state of the mind, the idea 
 were again presented of the christian warfare, 
 of a contest against principalities and powers, 
 and spiritual wickedness, it would be repelled 
 with disdain of the impertinence or arrogance 
 which could assume for such matters any of the 
 lofty terms belonging, and, (it would be proudly 
 said^) deservedly applied, to the transactions of 
 
380 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 Trafalgar and Waterloo. This contempt may 
 be felt by persons to whom the glories of war 
 are only a pageant of the imagination ; but it 
 would be a still stronger sentiment in most of 
 the men who have actually witnessed and shared 
 the terrors and triumphs of martial exploit, if they 
 by accident should hear the figurative language 
 in question, and lend for a moment attention 
 enough to understand what it should mean. In 
 short, between distaste for its insipidity, and 
 almost resentful scorn of its impertinence of 
 pretension, the metaphor would be, by most 
 men of high-toned spirit, flung back on the 
 imbecile religionists, as an inane fancy, in which 
 they are seeking to make for themselves a com- 
 pensation for their incapacity of any thing truly 
 great. Let these wars, enemies, and heroes of 
 vapour, they would say, busy the feeble souls 
 that can make a mock reality of such matters. 
 
 But what shall we think of the sanity of the 
 perceptions of minds thus capable of being 
 enchanted away into such imaginary scenes, 
 proudly sympathetic with the ardour of battles 
 and triumphs, and bereft of all cognisance of 
 their own nearest, deadHest, mightiest enemy. 
 Moral Evil ? And if our thoughts go from 
 those who are thus fired with the imagination of 
 martial scenes, to those who are in the temper 
 for the reality, how deplorable it is to behold 
 moral agents, whom we are to call rational, 
 prompt in hostile pride, vigilantly quick to 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 381 
 
 see or suspect an enemy, burning with heroic 
 spirit, inflated with notions of glory, but who 
 would turn away with slight or scorn at the 
 representations, by which divine or human ad- 
 monition is attempting to alarm them to a sense 
 of their danger from that foe compared with 
 which all others are but shapes of air ! That 
 creatures should be thus maddened with fancies 
 of the glory of destructive combats with one 
 another, and insensible of the presence and 
 quality of that destroyer which is invading them 
 all, is truly a sight for the most malignant beings 
 in the creation to exult over ; a phenomenon of 
 as dark a character as the frightful spectacle 
 sometimes exhibited in a shipwreck or a dun- 
 geon, where a company of men have fallen with 
 demoniac fury to mutual destruction, when 
 through the disaster of their situation they were 
 perishing by one common calamity ; or as that 
 which would have been presented by opposed 
 armed parties or legions, gallantly maintaining 
 battle on the yet uncovered spaces of ground, 
 while the universal flood was rising. 
 
 Alas for the stupified intelligence of those 
 minds which can regard as idle extravagance 
 this language which would arouse their attention 
 to what is as certain a reality as their own ex- 
 istence, and will infallibly make the most fatal 
 proof of its power on the spirits the least aware 
 that the destroyer is at hand ! What a renovation 
 of perceptive faculty is necessary to that being 
 
382 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 who would ask, either in levity or ignorant 
 surprise. What and where is that foe, so ma- 
 lignant and powerful ? — while there is exposed 
 in full view the mighty mass, and force, and 
 operation, of all that deceives, and depraves, 
 and ruins the souls of men. This spiritual 
 obtuseness would itself betray the intervention 
 of the very enemy described. Let a thoughtful 
 man survey the world of mankind, and see what 
 there is universally among them to excite the 
 sad exclamation, " Wo to the inhabitants of the 
 earth !" Let him deeply consider what it is 
 that he is beholding, while he observes this 
 power of evil assailing, and committing grievous 
 mischief upon, every human being, his expe- 
 rience testifying that himself is not exempted. 
 He is to form his judgment of the gloomy fact 
 under his view, on an estimate of the injury 
 done to each one, and of the number so injured, 
 including in the account the generations of all 
 past time. And let him try whether an earnest 
 and protracted attention to the dire exhibition 
 will detect a fallacy in its dreadful aspect, so 
 that his last sober judgment shall be like the 
 rehef of recovering by the aid of reason from 
 a superstitious terror. No ; he will find, uni- 
 formly, that the evil reveals itself to him in still 
 more substantial and deadly character, the longer 
 he fixes an unshrinking inspection on any of its 
 innumerable forms. The impression thus rein- 
 forced by stronger demonstration might become 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 383 
 
 too aggravated to be borne, if there were to be 
 suddenly imparted to him a great addition of 
 religious light and sensibility, through which he 
 should receive, while contemplating this vision 
 of evil, a brighter manifestation of the holiness 
 of God, and the perfection of his law. And even 
 such a view might still be but a faint apprehen- 
 sion compared with the perception of some 
 superior pure intelligence looking on this world ; 
 and how much more so in comparison with the 
 thought and feeling with which the Redeemer 
 beheld the error and depravity of our race. No 
 language or images for communicating informa- 
 tion in any world, can ever represent his estimate 
 of the scene. But that was the only adequate 
 apprehension of it. In whatever degree, there- 
 fore, its portentous quality is manifested to the 
 view of a rehgious observer, he will always be 
 certain that there is in it a depth of evil still 
 beyond the capacity of his thought ; while in 
 that which he does apprehend he perceives a 
 magnitude and atrocity which can be but feebly 
 expressed by borrowing terras from circum- 
 stances the most odious and dreadful in material 
 existence, and saying, that the multitude of 
 human souls are invaded, robbed, polluted, 
 chained, tormented, or murdered. 
 
 Sometimes we contemplate, perhaps, the 
 mighty progress of destruction, as carried over 
 a large tract of the earth by some of the memo- 
 rable instruments of the divine wrath, such as 
 
384 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 Attila, Jenghis Khan, or Timour. We behold 
 a wide spreading terror preceding, to be soon 
 followed by the realization of every alarming 
 presage, in resistless ravage and extermination. 
 Numberless crowds come tumultuously to our 
 view, in all the varieties of dismay, and vain 
 effort, and suffering, and death ; a world of 
 ghastly countenances, desperate struggles, la- 
 mentables cries, streaming blood, and expiring 
 agonies; with the corresponding circumstances 
 of fury and triumph, and the appropriate scenery 
 of habitations burning and the land made a 
 desert. And while one general character of horror 
 is spread over the immensity of the scene, the 
 imagined forms and aspects of individual victims, 
 frequently marked forth from the confused 
 aggregate, and presented to the mind in momen- 
 tary glimpses, as vivid points, standing out to 
 verify that dreadful character, give an effect of 
 reality to the visionary spectacle of misery and 
 destruction. 
 
 When a man of ardent imagination has dwelt 
 upon such a scene till it almost glows into actual 
 existence in his view, let him be assured it is 
 the language of truth and soberness that affirms 
 this spectacle to form but a faint and inadequate 
 image, to typify that other invasion which is 
 made on the spirits of all mankind ; that inva- 
 sion of which, indeed, all these horrors are them- 
 selves but a few of the exterior signs and results. 
 And yet creatures assailed and in danger of 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 385 
 
 destruction by this more awful calamity, survey- 
 ing in fancy, and shuddering while they survey, 
 these furies and miseries of remote times or 
 regions, shall bless their good fortune that they 
 are not exposed to any persecution of evil a 
 thousandth part so formidable! 
 
 When following in thought those perpetrators 
 of devastation and carnage, we have the consola- 
 tion of foreseeing its end. The Caesars and 
 Attilas were as mortal as the millions who 
 expired to give them fame. Of Timour, the 
 language of the Historian, kindling into poetry, 
 relates that " he pitched his last camp at Otrar, 
 where he was expected by the Angel of Death." * 
 But the power that wages war immediately on 
 the souls of men, the power of depravity and 
 delusion combined, has continued to live and 
 destroy while all these renowned exterminators 
 have yielded to the decree that sent them after 
 their victims. It is perpetually invigorated by 
 the very destruction which it works ; as if it fed 
 upon the slain to strengthen itself for new 
 slaughter, and absorbed into its own every life 
 which it takes away. For it is in the nature of 
 moral evil, as acting on human beings, to create 
 to itself new facilities, means, and force, for pro- 
 longing that action. From the effects there is 
 continually reflected back an augmentation of 
 power to the cause; a circumstance explained 
 by the fatal aptitude of the subject operated 
 * Gibbon. 
 c c 
 
386 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 upon to give its own strength to aid the per- 
 nicious agency. The injured subject, — the cor- 
 rupted nature, — still less and less, at each return 
 of the injurer, thinks of suspecting or resisting ; 
 still more and more effectively contributes that 
 the malignity may not be frustrated. So that 
 the power of sin acquires over those who are 
 surrendered to it a more decided predominance 
 in each stage of their progress, and makes 
 confirmed assurance of what they will be in the 
 next, unless prevented by something foreign 
 to their own moral nature. And since the 
 majority of human beings have always been 
 under this power, what a security it has possessed 
 for prolonging its empire of destruction ! What 
 a security, in the principle by which, in every 
 period, the greater number of all mankind were, 
 as individuals, incessantly growing worse ! And 
 to what a dreadful perfection of evil might such 
 a race attain but for Death, that cuts the term of 
 individuals so short, and but for the Spirit of 
 God, that converts some, and puts a degree 
 of restraint on the rest. 
 
 And now, if there really is thus in action 
 against the souls of our race, such an enemy 
 as all these epithets and images can but inade- 
 quately figure, can a professed servant of God 
 look round, and felicitate himself on having an 
 extremely easy test of his fidelity ? Where does 
 he find his privileged ground of immunity and 
 indulgence,^ while this mighty force of evil drives 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 387 
 
 and sweeps and rages, against God, and truth, 
 against goodness and happiness, his own spirit 
 and all men's spirits, as really as ever he that 
 was named the Scourge of God ravaged the 
 countnes of Asia and Europe ? In seeking such 
 exemption he must abandon all the objects and 
 interests against which this hostihty is directed ; 
 must therefore compromise and in effect co- 
 operate with the enemy. Let him consider what 
 scheme it is possible to conceive of true service 
 to the King of Heaven in this bad world, which 
 should not commit him in conflict at every point 
 of its execution. Against every good he can 
 think of, he will find an appropriate antagonist 
 evil already in full action, an action that will not 
 remit and sink into quiet when he approaches 
 to effect the intended good. Nay, indeed, in 
 what way is it that the servant of God the most 
 readily apprehends the nature of his vocation 
 but in that of seeing what it is against ? And 
 when he puts the matter to experimental proof, 
 does he ever find that those apprehended adver- 
 saries are nothing but menacing shadows ? Let 
 him that has made the most determined, pro- 
 tracted, and extensive trial, tell whether it be 
 idle common-place and extravagance when we 
 say that all christian exhortation is in truth a 
 summons to war. 
 
 There are many modes of the action of 
 this grand enemy, moral evil, which press so 
 
 cc2 
 
388 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 immediately on a man's own personal concern, 
 that a habitual conflict with them is an essential 
 condition of the christian character : a practical 
 question of hostility or acquiescence is impli- 
 cated with the ordinary course of his ' self- 
 government. There are other forms, of great 
 magnitude and hatefulness, existing in the 
 world, which do not so directly force themselves 
 into the question of his being a christian or not. 
 In judgment and feeling he must be, of course, 
 their implacable enemy. But since they throw 
 no temptation in his way, have the sphere of 
 their mahgnant operation at a great distance, 
 leave a very wide space clear for christian exer- 
 cise, and may seem also, by their vastness and 
 consolidated establishment, to be placed the 
 very last of all things that individuals can ac- 
 count themselves competent to attack, — to be 
 as enormous mountains limiting their field, — 
 it may be acknowledged a matter of some- 
 what less definable obhgation in what degree 
 he shall actively expend his animosity upon 
 them. The exhortation to apply a share of 
 his efforts in that direction, may be considered 
 as partly an appeal to those higher sentiments 
 of the religious spirit which aspire to the full 
 magnanimity and zeal of the christian charac- 
 ter. It is an admonition to the professed 
 adherents of Him who came on earth with a 
 design extending in hostility, without limit or 
 exception, to every thing adverse to goodness 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 389 
 
 and pernicious to the human soul, that if all 
 the moral evil in the world is not acting im- 
 mediately against them, it is against Him; and 
 that it is most reasonable that one of the laws 
 of their devotion to him should be, to iden- 
 tify themselves with him in the practical war- 
 fare to the widest scope which is really open 
 to their enterprise. It is an incitement to 
 their ambition, not to leave it to be ever said 
 again, with respect to any part of his opera- 
 tions against evil among men, that he trod 
 the wine-press alone, and that of the people 
 there was none with him. 
 
 When animated to this high and adventurous 
 spirit, a good man may wonder that the Hea- 
 thenism prevailing over large tracts of the world 
 should so little have been, in this country or 
 other protestant nations, till a comparatively 
 recent time, accounted as comprehended within 
 the sphere of required christian exertion.* One 
 
 * The indifference of protestants was not for want of ex- 
 amples, such as they were, of activity in this department. It 
 was very well known that there had been various missionary 
 enterprises under the appointment of the Romish Church. 
 And certain individuals employed in those missions were held 
 worthy of perpetual remembrance for their invincible per- 
 severance, and for a share, it was fair to believe, of a truly 
 christian principle in the motives which actuated them. But 
 when these undertakings were viewed in their general cha- 
 racter, it was so notorious that they were, as to the prevailing 
 motive, projects of hierarchical ambition, and that, in their 
 mode of prosecution, they accommodated, with the corruptest 
 policy, to the paganism they professed to convert, and intro- 
 
390 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 most amiable fraternity, indeed, whose gentle- 
 ness at home involves a principle by which it 
 glows into energy and heroism in proportion to 
 the remoteness of the distance, and the barba- 
 rousness and ruggedness of the field of action, to 
 which it is voluntarily exiled, have made missions 
 to the Heathens an essential part of their insti- 
 tution. But in general the friends of religion 
 seem to have regarded those great maladies of 
 the moral world, the delusions and abominations 
 of paganism, with a sort of submissive awe, 
 as if, almost, they had established a prescriptive 
 right to the place they have held so long ; or as 
 if they were part of an unchangeable, uncon- 
 trollable order of nature, like the noxious cli- 
 mates of certain portions of the globe. Or at 
 least, when these rehgious men have looked on 
 these mighty forms of darkness and iniquity, as 
 destined to vanish at some time from the scenes 
 of which they have been so long the curse, and 
 have prayed for that time to be hastened on, 
 they have found themselves anticipating and in- 
 voking, with undefined conception, some entirely 
 unwonted and even properly miraculous mode 
 of divine interposition, and have felt as if it 
 should be for men to stand off and see what God 
 
 duced a great deal of what was no better than paganism of 
 their own, that protestants could hardly regard them as chris- 
 tian projects ; and therefore felt no stimulus at the view of 
 their activity, and derived nothing to excite hope from the 
 boasts, or the facts, of their success. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 391 
 
 can do ; in this very feeling perhaps admitting 
 on their minds the imposition, through which a 
 defect of faith and zeal may be mistaken for 
 humility and devotion. 
 
 Within a later period, however, (within that, 
 chiefly, which has shown on so vast a scale the 
 availableness of human agency, for overturning 
 things of ancient, and wide, and commanding 
 establishment,) many good men have begun 
 to regard with much less prostration of feeling 
 those gigantic 'dominations'* which have so 
 many ages held so many nations in the debase- 
 ment of superstition. It came to be questioned 
 why a servant of Christ should shrink from 
 looking any of the powers of darkness in the 
 face, from defying them in his Master's name, or 
 from making the experiment of an application 
 of heaven's own fire, to the munitions of that 
 realm of deceit and cruelty in which the souls 
 of men are destroyed. In proportion as the 
 imaginary defence around these tyrannies over 
 the mind was in any part seen ready to fall, in 
 proportion as the reputed guardianship of fate 
 or infernal power which had seemed to render 
 them impregnable, was breaking up, the idea of 
 such an experiment on them assumed a less 
 visionary appearance. It took a character of 
 evident practicability ; and then it grew to a 
 conviction of duty, in some of those to whom 
 the cause of heaven was the object of highest 
 concern on earth. 
 
392 
 
 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 This impression was strongly felt by the first 
 movers of the project of that Mission to India, 
 which we regard as one of the most worthy 
 enterprises of the enlarging christian ambition 
 to make war on the greatest and most inveterate 
 evils of the moral world. When awaked, as it 
 were, to behold an ampler view of the world as 
 a field of activity for the zealots for the best 
 cause, they were struck with surprise at seeing 
 so few adventuring into the distance against the 
 most ancient and vast dominion of paganism ; 
 and they thought it high time that an end 
 should be put to the quietude of sentiment, the 
 antichristian tolerance, toward what was stand- 
 ing in defiance of that cause, with such proud 
 impunity. 
 
 The quality and the strength of this possessor 
 of so wide a region and so many slaves, were 
 evident enough under a very imperfect exposure, 
 to place the meditated experiment of hostility 
 greatly out of the common calculations of chris- 
 tian daring. It could not but appear so far 
 beyond those ordinary presumptions, as to pro- 
 voke the contempt of those who have no notion 
 of the interference of the Divine power in aid 
 of such projects. Yet the information possessed 
 at that time, by even the intelligent part of the 
 nation, had been too superficial or deceptive to 
 give any thing approaching to an adequate idea 
 of the superstition and corruption of the people 
 of Hindoostan. It has been chiefly during the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 393 
 
 period since this Mission was commenced, and 
 in a considerable degree in consequence of the 
 discussions and the exposition of evidence occa- 
 sioned by animosity against it, that a rapidly 
 increasing knowledge has brought the general 
 opinion to that judgment of the character and 
 condition of the Hindoos, which the translations 
 made from their sacred books by the mission- 
 aries and other eastern scholars, and the reports 
 of travellers reduced at last to the necessity of 
 keeping to the truth, — are fast contributing to 
 place beyond all honest controversy. If there 
 was in so old and well examined a thing as 
 human nature no undetected perversity, for 
 these disclosures to bring to hght as a new 
 principle of evil, they have, however, shown 
 some of its known evil principles inhering and 
 operating in it with such an absoluteness of 
 possessive power, and displaying this despotism 
 in such wantonly versatile, extravagant, and 
 monstrous effects, as to surpass our previous 
 imaginations and measures of possibility. 
 
 There is much in the Hindoo system that 
 is strikingly peculiar ; but as it is the substan- 
 tial greatness of the evil, rather than its specific 
 modifications, that requires to be presented to 
 the view of christian zeal, much of the stress of 
 our brief observations will be laid on properties 
 which are common to this with the other prin- 
 cipal modes of paganism. The object is rather to 
 display the system in its strength of pernicious 
 
394 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 operation, than to attempt any explanatory 
 statement of its precise materials or construction. 
 There needs no great length of description, 
 since the communications of missionaries, and 
 the depositions of inquisitive observers less liable 
 to the suspicion of prejudice, have made, within 
 the last few years, all who take any interest in 
 the subject familiarly acquainted with the pro- 
 minent features of the heathenism of central 
 Asia. As for the possible attainment of any 
 thing like a complete knowledge, it may defy 
 all human faculty ; which faculty besides, if it 
 might search the universe for choice of subjects, 
 could find nothing less worth its efforts for 
 knowledge. The system, if so it is to be called, 
 appears, to a cursory inquirer at least, an utter 
 chaos, without top, or bottom, or centre^ or any 
 dimension or proportion belonging either to 
 matter or mind, and consisting of materials 
 which deserve no better order. It is a world 
 of crude vanities, endlessly sporting into mon- 
 strous conformations and dissolving them ; much 
 resembling the bustle of tragi-comical creations 
 in a dream of delirium. It is the most remark- 
 able exemplification of the possibility of de- 
 grading a grand idea by conjunction with 
 meanness ; that of immensity becoming here 
 contemptible by combination with the very ab- 
 stract of worthlessness. 
 
 But, deserving of all contempt as the supersti- 
 tion is in itself, regarded merely as a farrago of 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 395 
 
 notions and fantasies, it is a thing for detestation 
 and earnest hostility when viewed in its practical 
 light, as the governing scheme of principles (so 
 to call them) and rites to a large portion of our 
 race. Consider that there is thus acting upon 
 them, as religion, a system which is in nearly 
 all its properties that which the true religion 
 is not, and in many of them the exact reverse. 
 Look at your religion, presented in its bright 
 attributes before you, reflecting those of its 
 Author ; and then realize to your minds, as far 
 as you can, the condition of so many millions 
 of human spirits receiving, without intermission, 
 from infancy to the hour of death, the full in- 
 fluence of the direct opposites to these divine 
 principles, — a contrast of condition of which we 
 should have but a faint emblem in that between 
 the Israelites and the Egyptians, in beholding 
 on the different sides the pillar, in its appear- 
 ance over the Red Sea. It is as in passing on 
 toward another world, that we have to make the 
 comparison between the respective systems of 
 religion under the guidance of which we and 
 they are in the progress thither. While ours 
 has, as its solar light and glory, the doctrine of 
 One Being in whom all perfections are united 
 and infinite, theirs scatters that which is the 
 most precious and vital sentiment of the human 
 soul and of any created intelligence, that is, the 
 affection which regards Deity, to an indefinite 
 
396 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 multitude and diversity of adored objects ;* the 
 one system carrying the spirit downward to 
 utter debasement through that very element of 
 feeling in which it should be exalted ; while the 
 other, when in full influence, bears it upward 
 through all things that combine to degrade it- 
 The relation subsisting between man and the 
 Divinity, as declared in the true religion, is of 
 a simple and solemn character ; a few plain 
 important propositions define it ; whereas the 
 Brahminical theory exhibits this relation in an 
 infinitely confounded, fantastic, vexatious, and 
 ludicrous complexity. While in the christian 
 system the future state of man is declared with 
 the same dignified simplicity, the contrasted 
 paganism, between some dream of an aspiring 
 mysticism on the one hand, and the paltriest 
 conceits of a reptile invention on the other, 
 presents, we might say sports, this sublime doc- 
 trine and fact in the shapes of riddle and 
 
 * It is acknowledged tLat the most ancient authorities of 
 Hindoo faith retain a trace of primeval truth, in the doctrine 
 of a Supreme Spirit, distinguished from the infinity of perso- 
 nifications on which the religious sentiment is wasted, and 
 from those few transcendent demon figures which proudly 
 stand out from the insignificance of the swarm. But this 
 idea reduced to inanity by time, superstition, and ignorance, 
 feebly apprehended by the general mind, a mere nebula in the 
 Hindoo heaven, is inefficacious for shedding one salutary ray 
 on the spirits infatuated with all that is trivial and gross in the 
 superstition. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 397 
 
 whimsey. Ours is an economy according to 
 which rehgion, considered as in its human sub- 
 jects, consists in a state of the mind instead of 
 exterior formahties ; the institutes of the Hin- 
 doos make it chiefly consist in a miraculously 
 multiplied and ramified order or disorder of 
 ritual fooleries. It is almost superfluous to 
 notice in the comparison, that while the one 
 enjoins and promotes a perfect morality, the 
 other essentially favours, and formally sanctions, 
 some of the worst vices. It may suffice to add, 
 that while the true religion knows nothing of 
 any precedence in the Divine estimate and re- 
 gard, of one class of human creatures before 
 another, in virtue of nativity or any mere natu- 
 ral distinction, the superstition we are describing 
 has rested very much of its power upon a classi- 
 fication according to which one considerable 
 proportion of the people are, by the very cir- 
 cumstance of their birth, morally distinguished 
 as holy and venerable, and another more nu- 
 merous proportion, as base and contemptible, 
 sprung from the feet of the creating god, that 
 they might be slaves to the tribe which had the 
 luck and honour to spring from his head. 
 
 Such is this aggregate of perversions of all 
 thought, and feeling, and practice. And yet, 
 the system, being religion, acts on its subjects 
 with that kind of power which is appropriate 
 and peculiar to religion. The sense which man, 
 by the very constitution of his nature, has of 
 
398 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 the existence of some superhuman power, is 
 one of the strongest principles of that nature ; 
 whatever, therefore, takes a really effectual hold 
 of this sense will go far toward acquiring the 
 regency of his moral being. This conjunction 
 of so many delusions does take possession of 
 this sense in the minds of the Hindoos, with a 
 mightier force than probably we see in any other 
 exhibition of the occupancy of religion, on a 
 wide scale, in the world. But to the power 
 which the superstition has in thus taking hold 
 of the religious sense, is to be added that which 
 it acquires by another adaptation ; for it takes 
 hold also, as with more numerous hands than 
 those given to some of the deities, of all the 
 corrupt principles of the heart. What an awful 
 consideration, that among a race of rational 
 creatures a religion should be mighty almost to 
 omnipotence by means, in a great measure, of 
 alliance with the evil that is within them ! What 
 a melancholy display of man, that the two con- 
 trasted visitants to the world, the one from 
 heaven, the other deserving by its qualities to 
 have its origin referred to the world below, — 
 that these two coming to make trial of their 
 respective adaptations and affinities, upon human 
 spirits, the infernal one should find free admis- 
 sion, through congeniality, to the possession of 
 the whole souls of immense multitudes; while 
 the one from heaven should but obtain in indi- 
 viduals, here and there, a possession which is 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 399 
 
 partial at the best, and to be maintained by a 
 conflict to the end of life against implacably 
 repugnant principles in the soul. Well may a 
 christian be affected with the most humiliating 
 emotion, both for his race and himself, while he 
 reflects, — I have a nature which might have 
 yielded itself entire to a false religion, but so 
 reluctantly and partially surrenders itself to the 
 true one, as to retain me in the condition of 
 having it for the chief concern of my life and 
 prayers that the still opposing dispositions may 
 be subdued. 
 
 The fact is too obvious to need illustration in 
 particulars, that this superstition, while it com- 
 mands the faith of its subjects, completes its 
 power over them by its accordance to their 
 pride, sensuality, and deceitfulness ; to that 
 natural concomitant of pride, the baseness which 
 is ready to prostrate itself in homage to any 
 thing that shall substitute itself for God ; and 
 to that interest which criminals feel to transfer 
 their own accountableness upon the powers 
 above them. But then think what a condition 
 for human creatures : they believe in a religion 
 which invigorates, by coincidence and sanction, 
 those principles in their nature which the true 
 religion is intended to destroy; and in return, 
 those principles thus strengthened contribute to 
 confirm their faith in the religion. The mis- 
 chief inflicted becomes the most effectual per- 
 suasion to confidence in the inflicter. 
 
400 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 Observe, again, the power possessed by this 
 stupendous delusion in having direct hold on the 
 senses, in so many ways, even exclusively of 
 the grosser means, (the grossest possible, as you 
 are apprised,) of which it avails itself to please 
 them. It has attributed an inherence of some- 
 thing representative of the properties of deity 
 to numberless visible objects, whence it emanates 
 in a continual influence on the mind through the 
 senses. All the vain notions of the superstition 
 thus stand embodied before its devotees in mate- 
 rial phenomena, which are informed with a sig- 
 nificance that seems to look at them and speak 
 to them. Presented to them in these sensible 
 types, those delusive ideas occupy their faculties 
 sooner, almost, than they can think, more con- 
 stantly than they think, and in a mode of pos- 
 session stronger than mere thought. Indeed it 
 is a mode of possession which, (after faith has 
 grown into the habit of the mind,) may be 
 effectual on the feelings though direct thought 
 be wanting ; for we may presume that in India, 
 as in other places, when external objects have 
 been admitted as symbols of things believed but 
 unseen, they may preserve in the people much 
 of the moral habitude appropriate to that belief, 
 even at times when there is no strictly intellec- 
 tual apprehension. The Hindoo is under the 
 influence of this enchantment on his senses, 
 almost wherever the christian remonstrant against 
 the dogmas and rites of his superstition can 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 401 
 
 approach him, seeking access to his reason and 
 conscience. The man thus attempting may 
 have read idle fictions of magical spells, which 
 obstruct the passing of some line, or preclude 
 entrance at a gate ; but here he may perceive a 
 real intervening magic, between the truth he 
 brings, and the intellectual and moral faculties 
 into which he wishes to introduce it. In his 
 missionary progress among the people, perhaps 
 he shall address them where there is in sight 
 some gigantic idol, some holy river, some votive 
 object, some consecrated relic, or the tomb of 
 some revered impostor ; things which being con- 
 nected, in their apprehension, more closely with 
 religion than their garments are with their per- 
 sons, will impress the assurance that the religious 
 power (the numen) whose emblems are present, 
 is present itself; that it is a reality, of which 
 every thing adorable or fearful is at that instant 
 impending in menacing authority over them. 
 A thing inconsiderable in itself, firmly associated 
 with an invisible greater thing as its sign, may 
 have the effect not only of reminding of that 
 greater, but of aggravating the sense of both its 
 reality and importance. 
 
 His next address may be uttered in the vici- 
 nity of a temple, which, if in ruins, seems to 
 tell but so much the more impressively, by that 
 image and sign of antiquity, at what a remote 
 and solemn distance of time that was the reli- 
 gion which they feel to be the religion still ; if 
 
 D D 
 
402 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 undilapidated and continuing in its sacred use, 
 overawes their minds with the mysterious solem- 
 nities of its unviolated sanctuary; while the 
 sculptured shapes and gestures of divinities, over- 
 spreading the exterior of the structure, have 
 nothing in their impotent and monstrous device 
 and clumsy execution to abate the reverence of 
 Hindoo devotion, toward the objects expressed 
 in this visible language. The missionary, if an 
 acute observer, might perceive how rays of malig- 
 nant influence strike from such objects on the 
 faculties of his auditors, to be as it were reflected 
 in their looks of disbelief and disdain on the 
 preacher of the new doctrine. What a strength 
 of guardianship is thus arrayed in the very 
 senses of the pagan, for the fables, lying doc- 
 trines, and immoral principles, established in 
 his faith! 
 
 Or we may suppose the protester in the name 
 of the true God to be led to the scene of one 
 of the grand periodical celebrations of the extra- 
 ordinary rites of idolatry. There, as at the 
 temple of Jaggernaut, contemplating the effect 
 of an intense fanaticism, glowing through an 
 almost infinite crowd, he may perceive that each 
 individual mind is the more fitted, by being 
 heated in this infernal furnace, to harden in a 
 more decided form and stamp of idolatry as it 
 cools. 
 
 The very riches of nature, the conformations 
 and productions of the elements, co-operate ia 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 403 
 
 this mighty tyranny over the mind by occu- 
 pancy of the senses. Deity, while degraded in 
 human conception of it in being diffused through 
 these objects, comes, at the same time, with a 
 more immediate impression of presence, when 
 flowers, trees, animals, rivers, present them- 
 selves, not as effects and illustrations, but often 
 as substantial participants, or at least sacred 
 vehicles, of that sublimest existence, and the 
 whole surrounding physical world is one vast 
 mythology, an omnipresent fallacy. In praying 
 that the region may be cleared of idol gods, the 
 missionary might feel the question suggested 
 whether he be not repeating EHjah's prayer for 
 the withholding of rain, since that would cer- 
 tainly do the most toward vacating the pan- 
 theon, by the destruction of the flowers, trees, 
 animals, and streams. 
 
 This great enemy, against which we are wish- 
 ing to excite christian zeal, is *' mighty" in the 
 strength of venerable antiquity. Antiquity is, 
 all over the world, the favourite resource of that 
 which is without rational evidence; especially 
 60, therefore, of superstition ; and the Brahmi- 
 nical superstition rises imperially above all others 
 in assumption of dignity from the past, which it 
 arrogates as all its own, but emphatically that 
 where amazing remoteness appears to confer a 
 character of solemnity on time. Other domina- 
 tions over human opinion are under the neces- 
 sity of acknowledging an origin at a particular 
 pd2 
 
404 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 period, and in comparative insignificance; and 
 have had to attain their due honours by a slowly 
 enlarging progress downward through ages. But 
 this proud imposture, disowning every thing like 
 an infancy, disdaining all idea of having ever 
 been less and afterwards greater, and defying all 
 computation of time, makes the past, back to 
 an inconceivable distance, the peculiar scene of 
 its magnificence. And it teaches its devotees 
 to regard its continued presence on earth, not 
 as the progress of a cause advancing and bright- 
 ening into greatness and triumph, but merely as 
 something of the radiance reaching thus far, 
 and with fainter splendour, from that glory so 
 divine in the remote past. Its primeval mani- 
 festation was of such power as to prolong the 
 effect even to this late period, in which the 
 faithful worshippers have to look back so far 
 to behold the glory of that vision it once con- 
 descended to unfold on this world. The grand 
 point of attraction being thus placed in a past 
 so stupendous as to assume almost a character 
 of eternity, the contemplations, the devotional 
 feelings, and the self-complacency, are drawn 
 away in a retrospective direction, and leave 
 behind in contempt all modern inventions of 
 faith or institution, as the insignificant follies 
 sprung from the corruption of a heaven-aban- 
 doned period of time. The sentiments excited 
 in them by the many signs of decay in the 
 exterior apparatus of their system, such as the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 405 
 
 ruined state of numerous temples, will rather 
 coincide with this attraction in carrying the 
 homage and the pride to the glory that was once, 
 than lead to any suspicion of a futility for which 
 the system deserves to grow out of use. This 
 retrospective magnitude, this absorption of all 
 past duration in their religion, this reduction 
 to insignificance of whatever else has existed, 
 (if, indeed, all that has existed have not been 
 comprehended in it,) cannot fail to produce a 
 degree of elation in the minds of the Hindoos, 
 notwithstanding their incapability of genuine 
 sublimity of conception and emotion. 
 
 And again, however inanimate their affections 
 toward their contemporary relations, the idea 
 of an ancestry extending back through unnum- 
 bered generations, all having had their whole 
 intellectual and moral existence involved inse- 
 parably in their religion, and surrendering in suc- 
 cession their souls to become a kind of guardians 
 or portions of it, must add a more vital principle 
 of attraction to the majestic authority and sanc- 
 tion of such an antiquity. Generations of little 
 account in their own times may acquire, when 
 passed away to be contemplated as ancestry, a 
 certain power over the imagination by becoming 
 invested with something of the character of 
 another world, — a venerableness which combines 
 with and augments the interest which they hold 
 in our thoughts as having once belonged to 
 our mortal fraternity. This combined interest 
 
406 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 going wholly into the sentiments of religion, in 
 the pagans of whom we speak, they will feel as 
 if a violation of that would be an insult to each 
 of the innumerable souls of the great religious 
 family departed, all worthier of respect than any 
 that are now living in the world from which 
 they have vanished. This habitual reference to 
 their ancestors, with a certain sense of respon- 
 sibility, is maintained by various notions and 
 rites of their superstition, expressly contrived for 
 the purpose ; as well as by the pride which they 
 can all feel, in a still much greater degree than 
 the more refined and poetical tone of sentiment, 
 in thus standing connected, through identity of 
 religious character and economy, with the re- 
 motest antiquity. 
 
 Nor can the influence be small, in the way 
 of confirmed sanction and cherished pride, of 
 beholding that which has been the element of 
 the moral existence of an almost infinite train 
 of predecessors, attested still, as to its most 
 material parts, by a world of beings at this hour 
 coinciding with the devotee in regarding it as 
 their honour, their sanctity, and their supreme 
 law. Let the Hindoo direct his attention or 
 his travels whichever way he will, within the 
 circuit of a thousand leagues, he meets with a 
 crowding succession, without end, of living 
 thinking creatures who, notwithstanding many 
 capricious diversifications of their general faith, 
 live but to believe and act as he does with 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 407 
 
 regard to the most revered of its impositions. 
 And what, in effect, do they all think and act so 
 for, but as evidence that he is right ? The 
 mind can rest an assurance of its own rectitude 
 of persuasion on this wide concurrence of belief, 
 without therefore acknowledging to itself a 
 degrading dependence. Its mode of seeing the 
 matter is, not that the faith of a large assemblage 
 of other minds is therefore its faith, but that its 
 faith is theirs; not — I think and act as they do, 
 but. They think and act as I do. This sort of 
 ambitious expansion outward, from the indivi- 
 dual as a centre, saves his pride of reason from 
 being humiliated by the consideration of the 
 sameness of his notions with those of the great 
 mass. The sense of community in human 
 nature is strongly and complacently admitted, 
 when agreeing multitudes corroborate a man's 
 opinions without depriving him of the self-coin- 
 placency of believing, that he holds them in the 
 strength of his own wisdom. 
 
 This corroborating influence of the consent 
 of contemporary multitude in the most essential 
 points of the system, has, as we have hinted, 
 its effect among the Hindoos independently of 
 social affection. Never did any where a great 
 number of human creatures exist together with 
 such slender bonds of attachment to one another. 
 It is a striking illustration of the tendency of 
 their superstition, that it nearly abohshes these 
 interests, keeping the whole population in the 
 
408 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 state of detached and most selfish particles. 
 This seems indeed to be foregoing one of the 
 strongest means of power, since a system of 
 notions and moral principles might find the 
 greatest account in so combining itself with the 
 affections of nature as to engage them for auxi- 
 liaries. But then what a triumph of this bad 
 cause, that while, instead of enticing these cha- 
 rities into its service, it tramples on and destroys 
 them, it can notwithstanding make this assem- 
 blage of dissocial selfish beings act upon one 
 another in confirmation of their common delu- 
 sion, with an effect hardly less than that which 
 might have arisen from friendly sympathy. Of 
 little worth in one another's esteem as relations, 
 friends, and fellow-countrymen, it is as things 
 which the gods have set their stamp upon, and 
 located their essence in, that they have their 
 grand value. They have the effect of the sacred 
 figures sculptured on their temples, or of leaves 
 of their books of mythology. The seal or brand 
 of the deities set upon them does not indeed 
 dignify them all, but it makes them all vouchers 
 to the religion. They all in conjunction per- 
 sonify, as it were, that system which as much 
 requires the existence of Soodras to verify it 
 as of Brahmins. The " miry clay" of the feet 
 is as essential a part as the royal material of the 
 head. 
 
 Thus the vast multitude are made to serve 
 just as surety to one another, and all to each. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 409 
 
 for the verity of the superstition. And as the 
 existence of any of them on any other account 
 had been impertinent, their existence in such 
 prodigious numbers must needs seem to demon- 
 strate a mighty importance in that, for evidence 
 and exemphfication of which it was worth while 
 for them to be so many. 
 
 With so despotic a command over the people's 
 minds, it would have been strange if this empire 
 of delusion had forborne to assume the advan- 
 tage and security of those temporalities, which 
 no other spiritual tyranny was ever unearthly 
 enough to forget, and which, indeed, it would 
 have been a foolish impolicy to forego. Indi- 
 rectly, it possesses this mode of strength in 
 having for its subjects the princely and opulent 
 persons of the community ; who render it double 
 service, at once by profuse expenditures on its 
 temples, celebrations, and priests; and by the 
 homage of acknowledging all mere secular supe- 
 riorities, of wealth, rank, and power, to be 
 intrinsically subordinate to the highest of the 
 distinctions founded in religion. There must 
 be constant tokens of recognising, as paramount, 
 whatever belongs or is kindred to the divinities. 
 But those divinities have also their direct reve- 
 nues, in the shape of fixed and many of them 
 ancient appropriations ; with the addition of an 
 undefined right of exaction, enforced by priests 
 and consecrated mendicants upon the religious 
 charity of the people. This charity is in one 
 
410 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 sense voluntary ; but when it is considered with 
 what lofty pretensions these applicants make 
 their demands, (not unfrequently even assuming 
 some mode of identity with the gods themselves), 
 and what benefits or curses are declared, and 
 by the people believed to depend infalUbly on 
 their surrendering or withholding the tribute 
 required, it is easy to judge how much these 
 offerings and their quantity are left to free will. 
 
 Their own rights and those of their idols 
 might be trusted, for the power of maintaining 
 them, to men whose demands of a share of 
 the superstitious cultivator's produce are to be 
 resisted at the believed hazard of a blast on the 
 whole. As if, however, both such endowments, 
 and such force of requisition, had left cause to 
 fear that this infernal hierarchy should become 
 deficient in the substantial resources for pre- 
 serving its dominion of delusion and iniquity, 
 the Christian Government over India has sought 
 the honour of being its auxiliary; in which capa- 
 city it is at once accepted and despised by the 
 descendants of Brahma. The aid has been 
 afforded not simply in the way of securing, in 
 observance of the principle of toleration, the 
 pagan worship and means of worship from 
 violent interference, but in the form of a positive 
 active patronage. The administration of the 
 funds for the ceremonial and abominations of 
 idolatry, has been, to a very great extent, taken 
 under the authority and care of the reigning 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 411 
 
 power, composed of persons zealous on this 
 nearer side of a certain extent of water for the 
 established christian religion, which establish- 
 ment has also been recently extended to that 
 further side, — with what effect toward exploding, 
 or even modifying, this very marvellous policy, 
 or whether deemed to be perfectly harmonious 
 with it, we must wait to be informed.* In the 
 mean time, the religious public are amply in- 
 formed of a course of measures having been 
 deliberately pursued tending to support and pro- 
 long the ascendency of paganism. It has been 
 disclosed to their view that the highest autho- 
 rity has taken upon itself the regulation of the 
 
 * The writer has been told, that certain readers have taken 
 offence at something in this passage. He cannot well under- 
 stand why ; and perhaps those readers would not be much 
 disposed to explain. The two facts are, that the English 
 Government have adopted a policy of superintending and 
 patronizing the idolatrous establishments in India ; and that, 
 while systematically pursuing this policy, they have also ap- 
 pointed and endowed a Christian Ecclesiastical Establishment 
 there. Now, they do, or they do not, consider this measure 
 of establishing a christian national church there as compatible, 
 consistent, harmonious, with that policy of sanctioning and 
 promoting idolatry. Do they, or do they not ? Which part 
 of the alternative to assume, it may not be very easy for can- 
 dour to decide. As to the fact of the systematic policy in 
 
 question, it has been formally stated, or incidentally men- 
 tioned, in several publications relating to India. But whoever 
 may wish to see it exposed in its full extent and evidence, 
 may find it in a long, and very able and important article in 
 the 12th volume of the Christian Observer ^ (the numbers for 
 
 October and November, 1813.) We do not hear of any change 
 
 having taken place in the system. 
 
412 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 economy of idols' temples, has restored endow- 
 ments which had lapsed, and has made additional 
 allowances from the public revenue, where the 
 existing appropriations have been judged inade- 
 quate to preserve to those establishments the 
 requisite dignity and efficiency; — requisite for 
 what, but to prevent any relaxation of the hold 
 which the imposture has on the people ? And, 
 be it remembered, the revenue which is to afford 
 this aid is constantly pressing heavily for its 
 means of competence on the distressed resources 
 of this christian country. 
 
 We cannot presume to conjecture how much 
 sooner this accessional mean of power will begin 
 to fail, than those ancient ones, which the system 
 was possessed of when none of its gods or sages 
 could have foreseen a reserve of assistance in 
 such a quarter. Nor do we pretend to know 
 what oracles of the " lying spirit," once before 
 trusted in by a government, have given assu- 
 rance against all alarm respecting the judicial 
 notice which the Governor of the world may 
 take of the christian supporters of a system 
 which he has doomed to destruction. 
 
 If we add to all these modes and causes of 
 the mightiness of this superstition, the inde- 
 fatigable activity of the powers of darkness, 
 meaning literally infernal intelligences, believed 
 to be by suiferance busy in this world, it might 
 be readily admitted, we should imagine, that 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 413 
 
 there is nothing in it worthier to have sprung 
 from the inspiration, or to be kept in force by 
 the craft, of such a malignant agency. If there 
 are theologians who deny the intervention of 
 such a cause in this enormity of evil, is it that 
 their laying it all to the account of man alone 
 will serve the argument for that other favourite 
 opinion of theirs, which denies the radical cor- 
 ruption of his nature ? — What new hopes, or 
 consistencies, or facilities, for the prosecution 
 of this warfare, might be afforded by their view 
 of the matter, which makes the human nature 
 to be so excellent, and yet makes all this to be 
 its spontaneous product, it would be of no use 
 for us to stay to inquire ; since it is our destiny 
 to proceed in the contest under the notion, that 
 such magnitude of evil can be no less than the 
 leagued depravity of two bad natures. Those 
 who can ascribe it all to one, and at the same 
 time lavish their adulation on that one, would 
 seem to make no contemptible approximation, 
 in point of rationality, toward the superstition we 
 are speaking of, which acknowledges unreservedly 
 what wickedness is committed by the gods, but 
 insists that they are not the less to be adored. 
 
 Now, can a system of intellectual and moral 
 perversion, of which the demoniac strength is 
 but slightly developed in this brief description 
 of some of its characteristics, shew itself in the 
 view of the adherents of the true religion, with- 
 out conveying a provocation to their conscience 
 
 % 
 
414 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 and zeal to come forth, in aid of any reasonable 
 project for carrying a new power into attack on 
 what has maintained, through so many ages, 
 its character of a defier of the living God, in 
 spite of all that might have been supposed to 
 operate toward its destruction from time, and 
 Nature, and the vaunted reason of man ? Those 
 who partake of the spirit of Elijah, and are 
 " very jealous for the Lord of Hosts," will wish 
 that good men might be moved to conspire in 
 a hostility, which shall be carried into effect 
 through being first sent up as a devout service 
 and appeal to heaven, to be thence returned, 
 (for it is in this reflected power that christian 
 zeal has its efficacy,) to be thence returned, as 
 in burning rays, to scorch and blast, here and 
 there, the extended array of idolatry, and at 
 length to annihilate it. But, in thinking of such 
 a conspiring zeal, thus reflected with an inten- 
 sity not its own, to consume the mass of abomi- 
 nation, it is for each one to ask within himself. 
 Is there not in that system, made up of so 
 many depravities, some small part, some poison- 
 ous atom, some serpent vehicle of an evil prin- 
 ciple, which / may be, through the same divine 
 force imparted in its measure to the humblest 
 individuaFs effort, the means of destroying ? 
 And that minute portion of active principle, 
 which noxiously works on in consequence of 
 my not crushing it, — may it not be accounted to 
 work in my name, making my contribution, real 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 415 
 
 however diminutive, and though only by way of 
 omission, to the deadly mischief of that system 
 which I might contribute just so much to abo- 
 lish ? But even though the state of the matter 
 were, that no actual effect at all should result, 
 none discernible by Him who discriminates 
 every thing in the total of things, still, might I 
 not be required, in mere proof of my fidelity to 
 him, to give some demonstration of hatred, to 
 fling some practical salutation of war, against 
 an infernal monster that, in character of a con- 
 stellation of gods, arrogates the worship of a 
 large portion of the human race, and repays it 
 with perdition ? Can I hope to go, without 
 some sense of dishonour, to that higher empire 
 of the Almighty where every possible sentiment 
 of devotion is in actual excitement, from a region 
 where I have been nearly at peace with such an 
 odious usurpation ? 
 
 But even this state of peace with it has not 
 been enough for some of our countrymen to 
 maintain ; and we think the partiality, arising 
 in some instances almost to fanaticism, which, 
 both at home and abroad, they have manifested 
 without reserve for this grossest paganism, may 
 serve to enforce our demand on christian zeal. 
 It may do so, partly, by the illustration thus 
 afforded of the quality of the design, since that 
 may be presumed to be greatly excellent which 
 has had the exact effect of irritating out by 
 contrariety the worst vice lurking in profane 
 
416 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 minds ; and it may additionally do so by the 
 consideration, that if a pecuharly odious kind of 
 depravity, of the existence of which there was 
 perhaps no previous suspicion, suddenly dis- 
 closes itself in a nation, there should be an 
 extraordinary effort to promote a counter- 
 balancing good. Such an effort, besides that it 
 is due to the honour of God, w^ould seem to be 
 called for in behalf of the character of a christian 
 people. It may also involve somewhat of that 
 pohcy, in reference to their welfare, which sober 
 men would not easily pronounce superstitious 
 as exemplified in the parallel case of a ship, in 
 which, if several of the passengers were ex- 
 pressly and ravingly insulting Omnipotence, any 
 others, fearing the " God of the sea and the dry 
 land," would consider an extraordinary degree 
 of homage rendered to him on their part, in 
 direct contravention, a matter not altogether 
 foreign to the safety of the vessel. If their very 
 devotions had been, in the first instance, the 
 cause of bringing out this malignant impiety, 
 they would be certain, on the exhibition of it, 
 rather to double than remit the earnestness and 
 frequency of their prayers. 
 
 The promoters and immediate experimenters 
 of a christian attempt on the pagans of the East 
 naturally expected, in spite of the pretended 
 amiable mildness of the Hindoo character, to 
 encounter a strenuous and perhaps malicious 
 opposition from idolaters. But it was hardly 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 417 
 
 within their calculation that a considerable 
 number of persons of some note in England ; 
 men enjoying the advantages of education ; of 
 repute in the legislation, the mercantile interest, 
 and the literature of the country ; belonging to 
 its respected classes and professions ; and pre- 
 tending, for the most part, a veneration for the 
 religious establishment; vv^ould be provoked to 
 join in a violent outcry against a scheme for 
 imparting the gospel to the people of India. 
 Still less was it anticipated of what strain the 
 only music in this clamour was to be ; that the 
 virulent invective against the *' pernicious fanati- 
 cism" of missionary enterprise would ever and 
 anon be heard modulating itself to an expression 
 of indulgent partiality toward the execrable su- 
 perstition threatened by that enterprise. We 
 were not distinctly enough aware of the fact, that 
 men who hate the intrusion of a divine juris- 
 diction have a natural inducement to be favour- 
 able to a mode of pretended religion which they 
 can make light of, as devoid of all real authority. 
 The inducement is, that it helps them to make 
 light of religion altogether. The idolatrous 
 superstition is recognised as of the generic 
 nature of religion ; and it comes with great 
 pretensions to authority, — high antiquity, re- 
 ported miracles, learned priests, and an immense 
 number of believers : it may nevertheless be 
 disbelieved with reason and most certain ini' 
 punity. Under the encouragement of this 
 
 E E 
 
418 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 disbelief with reason and impunity, the mind, 
 impatient of acknowledging any express mani- 
 festation of a divine will, ventures to look 
 toward other religions, and at last toward the 
 Christian. That also has its antiquity, its re- 
 corded miracles, its priests, and a multitude of 
 believers. There is an exterior, though in part 
 very fallacious, appearance of similarity. And 
 though there may not be assurance enough to 
 assume formally the equality of pretensions in 
 the two cases, there is a successful eagerness to 
 evade the evidence and the conviction, that the 
 apparent similarity is superficial, the real differ- 
 ence infinite ; and the irreligious spirit springs 
 rapidly and gladly, in its disbelief, from the one, 
 as a stepping place, to the other. But that 
 which affords such a convenience for surmount- 
 ing the awe of the true rehgion, will naturally 
 be a favourite, even at the very moment it is 
 seen to be contemptible, and indeed, in a sense, 
 in consequence of its being so. Complacency 
 mingles with the very contempt for that from 
 which contempt may rebound on Christianity. 
 
 These partisans of paganism when it can be 
 turned to such an use, it were in vain to warn 
 of a time, when the summons to them will be, 
 in effect, to " come forth against the Lord," if 
 they dare then repeat their well remembered 
 words of homage to idolatry ;* a time when 
 
 * The most furious and raving of them, a person under a 
 military designation, is dead since this was written. The most 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 419 
 
 their impious affectation of liberal respect for all 
 '' religions," as proper and useful for their sever 
 ral parts of the world, (meaning that none of 
 them is true,) will give place to the insufferable 
 conviction of having insultingly rejected that in- 
 finite good which one, certainly and exclusively, 
 had to offer ; and when their contemptuous 
 disallowance of any higher rule of judging and 
 proceeding with respect to a people's religion, 
 than the consideration of how it may affect 
 government and commerce, will come to be 
 estimated and pronounced upon, in a scene 
 where all worldly pohcy will be at an end — 
 excepting in its retribution ; and where so many 
 millions will be awaiting that consignment, what- 
 ever in the equity of the Almighty it may be, 
 for which they will have grown to a fitness as 
 subjects of a false and depraving religion. Then 
 
 jocular, vulgar, clever, and far enough from least malicious, 
 of the revilers of the design for converting the idolaters, a 
 person with the ecclesiastical prefix to his name, still lives, 
 amply prosperous in the emoluments assigned by the church 
 to excite and reward faithful labours to promote the christian 
 religion in the world. The coarse revilings, of which the 
 chief objects were the senior missionaries at Serampore, were 
 expended on men who, between the direct efforts to commu- 
 nicate the Bible and teach its doctrines to the idolaters, and 
 the more secular labours to create pecuniary means purely for 
 application to that great purpose, were exerting themselves, 
 amidst innumerable difficulties, and in an oppressive climate, 
 to the utmost stretch of human ability and patience ; as the 
 now ancient survivors of the fraternity have continued to do 
 for twenty years longer. 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 will such men meet their account with the 
 fabricators and imposers of false religions to 
 serve their ambition, with apostates, and what- 
 ever other enemies of Christ will hear with 
 despair the sentence, " Behold, ye despisers, 
 and wonder, and perish." It can be of no use, 
 we repeat, to admonish them ; but we may urge 
 it on the friends of true religion and the illumi- 
 nation of the world, that to this phenomenon 
 of a zealous avowal and effort in favour of pa- 
 ganism, in this christian country, in this stage of 
 its knowledge, their contrary zeal and exertion 
 should be what the living rod of Moses was to 
 the serpents of the magicians. 
 
 It is at the same time to be acknowledged, 
 that there is a great abatement of the public 
 manifestation of this disposition to vindicate 
 idolatry, and this animosity against all attempts 
 to reduce its dominion. However unallayed the 
 rancorous sentiment may remain, it has been 
 found that its unqualified exposure is a little 
 incommodious on the score of character. Indeed, 
 in the season of its most virulent eruption, some 
 of the persons in whom it raged thought it 
 worth while, (others were more bold or honest,) 
 to endeavour to give it a disguised appearance. 
 It was made to inspirit some argument of pre- 
 tended political expediency. It was vented 
 under the form of a representation, urged 
 with every seeming of a most sincere and wrath- 
 ful earnestness, that missionary proceedings. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 421 
 
 permitted but a very little while longer, would 
 infallibly work the destruction of the British 
 empire in Asia; although it is probable that 
 some of these malignants laughed in private at 
 such as might be simple enough to let them- 
 selves become, upon this representation, affected 
 with this panic. Such assertions were hazarded 
 in a sanguine confidence, for which it is a 
 lamentable reflection on our country that there 
 should have been no slight grounds, that the 
 matter would not be suffered to proceed to the 
 trial. But a power from heaven interposed, 
 acting partly by the instrumentality of the zeal 
 of the religious part of the community; the 
 Government were decided to prolong the im- 
 punity of the reviled missionaries, which autho- 
 rity in their favour has silenced many that 
 were incapable of feeling any restraint from 
 the fear of God ; and time and experience have 
 brought contempt on all their rant of prog- 
 nostication. 
 
 We have alluded to such men only to gain 
 from them a service for which we shall owe 
 them no thanks. Religion should keep pace 
 with physical science in the art of making 
 noxious things contribute to salutary operations. 
 No bad moral force, if it cannot be annihilated, 
 should be left free from attempts to cheat it into 
 a contrary action to what it naturally intends; 
 and we wish to make the force of evil, emit- 
 ted from these men's minds, act in coincident 
 
422 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 impulse with the motives which should carry 
 the servants of God into a closer and still more 
 animated conflict with the powers of heathen 
 darkness. 
 
 This good cause has prevailed on the judg- 
 ment, and obtained the practical aid, of the 
 religious public, to an extent which we are 
 willing to regard as an omen from heaven, of 
 great effects to be accomphshed in its progress. 
 But it is not improbable there may still remain, 
 among a minority of good men, some feelings 
 not quite reconciled to schemes of such wide 
 scope, such interminable demands of assistance, 
 and such a distant field of execution; schemes, 
 too, at the naming of which we may still seem 
 to hear an echo of the numberless voices that 
 pronounced them chimerical and fanatical ; 
 schemes but partially emerging from the effect 
 of that general ridicule which leaves such marks 
 upon an object that most men are long ashamed 
 to entertain it. 
 
 There is much difference of mental constitu- 
 tion for receiving the impression of such projects. 
 There is a class of good men naturally formed 
 to be exceedingly sober, and cautious and deli- 
 berate, and anxious for all things to be kept in 
 right proportions and manageable compass. 
 Excellent qualities when themselves in right 
 proportion ; adapted specifically to some depart- 
 ments of duty, and of great use in a certain 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 423 
 
 measure of interference in all. But let it be 
 suggested to their possessors, that there is per- 
 haps no class of men so apt to overvalue their 
 peculiar endowments, in contradistinction to 
 those of a different order; and no class more 
 needing to be warned of the faults akin to their 
 virtues, and into which those virtues are liable 
 to be insensibly transmuted. Nor, while they 
 are in an especial manner ready to take credit 
 to themselves for independence of judgment, 
 are there any good men whose feelings and 
 opinions are more at the mercy of those from 
 whom they differ ; no class being liable to be 
 driven further on one side the middle line, in 
 a concern of duty, by what appears to them an 
 extreme on the other. And in their own ex- 
 treme, when they have once taken their position 
 there, they will maintain themselves with an air 
 and pride of that strong-mindedness which, to 
 deserve the name of firmness or independence, 
 ought to have kept them out of it. 
 
 It may be conceded to these worthy men, 
 that the advocates of missions have not always 
 avoided extravagance. Especially when under 
 the influence of a large assembly, supposed to 
 be animated by interests which extend to the 
 happiness of a world, they may have been 
 excited into a language which seemed to mag- 
 nify these interests, and the projects in which 
 they were embodied, at the expense of all other 
 • duties and concerns; insomuch that some of 
 
424 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 those extra prudent friends of ours, in the audi- 
 tory, have been wondering, and not without 
 reason, what, at that rate of devotement of 
 time, exertion, and money, we are to do, not 
 only with the other claims of religious duty, but 
 with the whole ordinary economy of life, press- 
 ing on us as it does with so many peremptory 
 demands. But allowance must be made for a 
 little excess in the pleader of such a cause. 
 Its importance, of which he is at all times so- 
 berly certain, expands into a kind of dazzling 
 magnificence before him when a multitude of 
 minds seem to be contemplating it in sympathy 
 with him. It appears to him as bright with a 
 reflection of all the complacent regards which 
 those minds are fixing upon it. Under such a 
 temporary animating influence, all the topics 
 and arguments which he has previously accumu- 
 lated in favour of the selected subject, become 
 as it were dilated and on fire, without any 
 intentional exaggeration; and unless he had a 
 capacity, like Bacon, of keeping all subjects 
 within his view almost at once, in their relative 
 proportions as in a map, he will naturally repre- 
 sent the claims of the selected one in terms 
 partaking too much of ambition and monopoly. 
 We cannot wonder that our calculating friends 
 should be making, in their minds, a strong pro- 
 test against this excess ; but they are aware 
 how little they need entertain any apprehension 
 for its consequences ; as well knowing that the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 425 
 
 persons addressed are never betrayed into 
 such prolonged enthusiasm, as to forget to 
 take the practical standard of their duty at a 
 sufficient reduction of the requirement made 
 or implied in the hyperbolical language of the 
 advocate. 
 
 While, however, some concession is thus 
 made to the cautious good men, who are more 
 afraid of extravagance than of all other errors 
 in designs for promoting rehgion, they must be 
 told, that it would have been an ill fate for 
 Christianity in the world, if christians of their 
 temperament could always have held the as- 
 cendency in projecting its operations. If they 
 would for a moment put themselves, in imagi- 
 nation, in the case of being contemporary with 
 WiclifF, or with Luther, and of being applied to 
 by one of these daring spirits for advice, we 
 may ask what counsel they can suppose them- 
 selves to have given. They cannot but be 
 instantly conscious that, though they had been 
 protestants at heart, their disposition would have 
 been to array and magnify the objections and 
 dangers; to dwell in emphatic terms on the 
 inveterate, all-comprehensive, and resistless do- 
 minion of the papal church, established in every 
 soul and body of the people ; on the vigilance 
 and prompt malignity of the priests ; and on the 
 insignificance, as to any probable success, of an 
 obscure individual's efforts against an immense 
 and marvellously well organized system of 
 
426 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 imposture and iniquity, — even were it not the ex- 
 treme of self-delusion to expect that those efforts 
 themselves could be of any long continuance, 
 v^hen so easy and apparently certain to be cut 
 short by the ultima ratio of his provoked enemy, 
 in the form of tribunals, dungeons and death. 
 In a v^ord, if in those instances such counsel had 
 been acted upon as they v^ould have given, that 
 zeal which was kindling and destined to lay a 
 great part of the mightier Babylon in ashes, 
 would have smouldered and expired in a languid 
 hstless hope, that the Almighty would sometime 
 create such a conjuncture of circumstances, as 
 should admit an attempt at reformation without 
 a culpable and useless temerity. And so we 
 might, for WiclifF and Luther, have been wor- 
 shipping waxen toys, and trusting our most 
 momentous interests on the strength of masses, 
 penances, absolutions, and ceremonial antics, at 
 this very day. 
 
 And to descend to the undertaking now under 
 consideration ; — all that has been accomplished 
 by it in India, and is now accomplishing, as 
 introductory, we trust, to a religious change not 
 less glorious or extensive than the Reformation, 
 may be regarded by its active friends as a 
 reward, in some sense, for having refused to be 
 controlled by the dissuasive arguments, and 
 desponding predictions, of many worthy depre- 
 cators of rashness and enthusiasm. 
 
 It is from such a quarter that we may hear 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 427 
 
 disapprobation conveyed in the question, What 
 can we do against an evil of such enormous 
 magnitude, and so consoHdated ? It may be 
 answered, (as it has been already suggested,) 
 What you can do, if the expression mean what 
 precise quantity of effect a severe calculation 
 may promise from a given effort, is not always 
 to be the rule of conduct ; for this would be 
 to deny the absolute authority of the Divine 
 Master. We refuse to obey him for his own sake, 
 if we assume to place the governing reason for 
 all the services we are to render in a judgment 
 which we think we can ourselves form, whether 
 they will accomplish an end worth the labour ; 
 and therefore to fix their limit at the point be- 
 yond which we cannot with confidence extend 
 our calculations. Such an arrogant principle, 
 carried to its full length, would at last demand 
 of him that he should require no service without 
 placing clearly within our view all those con- 
 sequences of it on which his own just reasons for 
 exacting it are founded. That is, it would 
 become a demand to be exempted from all ser- 
 vices whatever, of a higher order than the 
 secular business of life. 
 
 It is the very contrary spirit to this of restric- 
 tive parsimonious calculation that has been the 
 most signally honoured ; inasmuch as some of 
 the most effectual and of the noblest services 
 rendered to God in all time, have begun much 
 more in the prompting of zeal to attempt 
 
428 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 something for him as it were at all hazards, 
 than in rigorous estimates of the probable mea- 
 sure of success. 
 
 Let it be observed also, how all history 
 abounds with great ultimate consequences from 
 little causes ; in which fact it only declares and 
 exemphfies a prevailing law in the constitution 
 of the world ; a law by which the diminutive 
 grows to the large, sparks flame into conflagra- 
 tions, fountains originate mighty streams, and 
 most inconsiderable moral agents and actions 
 are made the incipient points whence trains of 
 agencies and effects, proceeding on with con- 
 tinual accession, enlarge into results of immense 
 magnitude. Some of these great results, now 
 forming most important circumstances and mo- 
 difications in the state of the human race, bear 
 on them a peculiarity of character which will 
 hardly allow us to look at them without a refer- 
 ence in thought to the points whence the pro- 
 gression began. They appear, notwithstanding 
 their extension, with a certain prominence and 
 distinctness by which we are reminded of their 
 history ; while others are become so diff*used 
 and blended into the general conformation of 
 things, that their own distinguishable colour, so 
 to speak, does not remain obvious enough to 
 excite readily or necessarily any thought of them 
 as effects which may be retrospectively traced to 
 precise points, where their causes first sprung 
 into action. Much of the actual condition of 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 429 
 
 our part of the world consists of a number of 
 these grand results of enlarging trains of effects, 
 progressive from the smallest beginnings at vari- 
 ous distances back in the past. And were not 
 these now wide-spread consequences so combined 
 into one order of things and familiarized around 
 us, and were not, besides, their history from their 
 origin so deficient and confused, it might very 
 often be a pleasing employment, for both the 
 philosophic and the devout mind, to trace them 
 backward to the diminutiveness in which they 
 began. A mysterious hand threw a particle of 
 a cause, if we may express it so, among the 
 elements ; it had the principle of attraction in 
 it; it found something akin to it to combine 
 with, obtaining so an augmentation, to be in- 
 stantly again augmented, of the attracting and 
 assimilating power, which grew in a ratio that 
 became at length stupendous ; and it exhibits 
 the final result, (if any result yet attained could 
 be called final,) in something, perhaps, which 
 now forms the most important distinction and 
 advantage of a nation, or of a still larger section 
 of the world. What was the commencement of 
 the true religion in this land, and of those several 
 reformations which have partly restored it from 
 its corruptions ? And what would be the term of 
 proportion, according to our principles of judg- 
 ing, between the object as seen in the diminu- 
 tiveness of the incipient cause, and in its present 
 
430 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 extent of prevalence ? — between the germ in the 
 acorn, and the majestic oak ? 
 
 A result thus growing to an immense mag- 
 nitude from an original cause apparently so 
 insignificant, is the collective consequence of a 
 great number of causes progressively starting 
 and multiplying into consentaneous operation, 
 each of them having in the same manner its 
 appropriate enlarging series of consequences, 
 still uniting in the one great process. And in 
 looking to the future progress of an undertaking 
 for diffusing Christianity in India, is it not 
 rational to presume, that many small means and 
 little events will be, in their respective times and 
 places, the commencements, and in a sense the 
 causes, of trains of consequences interminably 
 advancing and enlarging ? 
 
 For example, we may imagine the destiny of 
 some particular copy of the Bible or New Testa- 
 ment, in one of the native languages ; and 
 such a volume would be looked at and held in the 
 hand with a strange interest, could there be any 
 sign to indicate this destiny, at the moment of its 
 issuing from the repository. It may be supposed 
 to come into the hands, in a way much like ca- 
 sualty, of a heathen somewhat more thoughtful 
 than his companions. Disgust or indignation 
 at the first aspect of what he finds there may 
 prompt him to throw away the book, which he 
 may perceive to be virtually an impeachment 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 431 
 
 of his religion, his gods, his priests, and himself. 
 But a certain disquiet, of curiosity mingled with 
 a deeper sentiment, shall have seized him, and 
 shall impel him irresistibly to that book again : he 
 shall feel as if the eye of a spectre had glanced 
 upon him, and stricken him with a fascination 
 that compels him to follow whether he will or 
 not. A rising suspicion that all within him, and 
 around him, may have been wrong, shall be 
 aggravated, by repeated perusal, to full convic- 
 tion ; while the dawn of the true light and of a 
 happier state is breaking on the night of his soul. 
 Communications and discussions with his rela- 
 tions and neighbours may accompany the latter 
 part of this process ; and his finally complete 
 persuasion will be followed by zealous exertions 
 to impart what he will deem the greatest good 
 on earth. The vast majority will obdurately 
 resist ; but within a year he shall find one or 
 two, and in the next several more, surrendering 
 to the same convictions, and then, as it were 
 instinctively, unfolding their new faith as a net 
 for proselytes. Who shall presume to say what 
 the consequence may not be in fifty or in thirty 
 years? Which of our christian deriders of the 
 madness of missionary hopes, would venture to 
 pledge his fortune for the inviolateness, half a 
 century hence, of those shrines and idols, at 
 present firequented and adored in the district 
 where such a man is perhaps at this hour begin- 
 ning, by the intrusion of the supposed Bible, to 
 
432 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 be disturbed in his " unchangeable " notions and 
 rites, as these christians have so often pronounced 
 them? 
 
 We may without extravagance suppose these 
 events to happen in a great number of instances, 
 here and there in that realm of darkness ; and 
 v^e might add many other diminutive incidents 
 and agents. The possible effects of a few tracts, 
 conveyed in a manner appearing at first unac- 
 countable, to a great distance from the place 
 where they may have been put into pagan hands, 
 by good men little apprised of the dignified 
 appointment with which those humble gifts left 
 their own, have been remarkably exemplified in 
 some of the rather recent accounts of this mission. 
 Among the little causes thus having a destiny 
 to great consequences, will be presented to our 
 fancy some images of the infantine countenances 
 of the pupils now taught, and hereafter to be 
 taught, in those numerous schools brought into 
 existence by the mission, not indeed contrived 
 for proselytizing, as the immediate purpose, but 
 certain to contribute to it indirectly in the course 
 of years. 
 
 You are glad to admit how reasonable, how 
 sober, it is to expect that many such apparently 
 inconsiderable things will thus grow to magnitude, 
 in the progress of their effects con tributary to 
 the success of the good cause. But it will occur 
 to you that, in this fiction of great things from 
 little beginnings, we have not begun quite at 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 433 
 
 their beginning. It is a pleasing thing to see, in 
 the hands of the supposed pagan, the book or 
 tract which may thus explode his superstition, 
 and perhaps be the cause of ultimately setting 
 his temple and idols on fire ; but how is that 
 formidable substance to come, gratuitously, into 
 his hands ? Think what must have preceded. 
 Think of the complicated process of its prepara- 
 tion, involving so many kinds of workmanship. 
 And this brings the train of the operation up to 
 its originating matter in your own hands, a com- 
 mencement so long antecedent to the pagan's re- 
 ceiving the supposed book, the event from which 
 we have dated such pleasing consequences, but on 
 which consequences we are not to be indulging 
 our anticipative gratulations as if the book were 
 to fall from the sky. The little cause, then, 
 which we may follow onward in thought to such 
 noble effects, — see it deriving itself from a still 
 less, — a piece of money ; which may have carried 
 its image and superscription, in the insignificance 
 of ordinary service, through many hands, at each 
 transit very harmless, in one or other of them 
 possibly subsidiary, to the cause of Evil, till it has 
 come into the hand that has devoted it to pro- 
 duce a bible, which may have the effect at length 
 of a thunderbolt on an idol's temple. Here is 
 an answer to the question, perhaps querulously 
 asked. What can we dol 
 
 But it wdll be said, that such fanciful fictions, 
 even supposing a certainty that they will be 
 
 F F 
 
434 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 realized, bring no lively incitement, because, the 
 contributions being thrown into a common sum 
 of means, no one's quota can have any distinct 
 operation, no individual can please himself with 
 the idea that his particular contribution may be 
 made the point of origination of one of these 
 happy trains ; which would thus be merely so 
 many streams sluiced from a reservoir of collec- 
 tive contribution ; rather than springing from 
 distinct original fountains, at each of which an 
 individual might place some mark or inscription 
 to signify that it is his. Well then, the question 
 is, w^hether the share, which the individual shall 
 have in originating whatever trains of progressive 
 good shall take their rise from the general recep- 
 tacle of christian liberality, shall be deemed not 
 worth the purchase. A share belonging to him, 
 though not distinguishable, will really be there. 
 While this union of the means so contributed 
 makes those who supply them sharers of the loss 
 in all those bibles, those little books, and those 
 cases of the tuition given to juvenile heathens, 
 which shall fail of producing the intended good, 
 it makes them participators also in all those 
 happy and noble consequences, of which it may 
 be assumed as certain that some of the bibles, 
 some of the tracts, some of the instructed heathen 
 children, will be the cause. 
 
 This confidence, that in the prosecution of thie 
 enterprise now under consideration, there cannot 
 fail to be some striking instances of particular 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 435 
 
 and apparently diminutive means thus originating 
 a succession of important movements, enlarging 
 as it advances, — this confidence is authorized 
 (independently of all other reasons,) by the fact, 
 that such instances have occurred in every 
 recorded scheme of christian enterprise which 
 has been prosecuted on a w^ide scale, from right 
 motives, and with indefatigable perseverance. 
 Not that in all of them there have been such 
 magnificent ultimate effects from Httle causes as 
 we have been describing ; not that in every pro- 
 vince of benevolent activity a rill from some 
 little obscure source has swelled into a Nile, and 
 fertilized a whole region ; but in all of them it 
 may be safely asserted that there have been 
 instances, of a magnitude to throw contempt 
 on frigid, indolent, and irreligious calculation. 
 
 It is not improbable the chief strength of 
 whatever reluctance may still remain, among the 
 friends of Christianity, to yield their full coopera- 
 tion in projects for sending that religion to sup- 
 plant the delusion and idolatry of the heathen 
 world, consists in a kind of Religious Fatalism, 
 which would make the objection in some such 
 terms as these ; — If that Being whose power is 
 almighty has willed to permit on earth the pro- 
 tracted existence in opposition to him of this 
 enormous evil, why are we called upon to vex and 
 exhaust ourselves in a petty warfare against it ? — 
 why, any more than to attempt the extirpation 
 
 FF 2 
 
436 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 of all the venomous reptiles of India, or the 
 immediate demolition of all the idols' temples ? 
 If it were his will that it should be overthrown, 
 we should soon, without having quitted our 
 places and our quiet, in any offensive movement 
 toward it, feel the earthquake of its mighty- 
 catastrophe ; and if such be not his will, then we 
 should plainly be putting ourselves in the predi- 
 cament of willing something which he does not 
 will, and making exertions which must therefore 
 infallibly prove abortive. 
 
 We may question such an objector as to the 
 real length to which his opinion or feeling goes. 
 May it approach to a sentiment like this, — that, 
 the thing contemplated being permitted by him 
 who is infinitely good and powerful, it is there- 
 fore not of a spirit hostile to him, not of a nature 
 directly the reverse of that of his attributes, not 
 of deadly malignity to his creatures; that, in 
 short, the brand of divine reprobation stamped 
 by both revelation and reason on idolatry, and 
 on each of its deceits and depravities severally, is 
 itself, in truth, but a deceit of another kind, a 
 mere accommodation to a certain superficial and 
 conventional theory, the real fact being, after 
 all, that God is at peace with the thing thus 
 reprobated ? 
 
 We may presume he will instantly reply in 
 the negative, and say, that he holds this mass of 
 error and turpitude to be intrinsically and immu- 
 tably opposite to the divine goodness and holiness. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 437 
 
 and pernicious to man, — any other judgment of 
 the matter being, according to all fact and all 
 scripture, utterly and impiously absurd ; and that 
 therefore the divine permission of this great evil, 
 being no sanction of it, is simply an impenetrable 
 and awful mystery. 
 
 Then, we immediately say to him, there are 
 two views, according to one of which you are to 
 form your scheme of conduct ; on the one hand, 
 a mystery in the divine government, a permission 
 infinitely inexplicable to you ; and on the other, 
 the most glaring manifestation of the quality of 
 the thing so permitted, as hateful in itself and in 
 the sight of God. Consider from which of these 
 two it is the most rational for you to take your 
 rule of action ; from that where your under- 
 standing is profoundly lost, or from that where 
 all is demonstration or self-evidence. You have 
 light given you on the nether tract where you are 
 placed, beneath the awful mystery in the heaven 
 above, which interposes darkness between you 
 and the reasons and counsels of the Almighty, 
 By this hght you have an infalhble manifestation 
 of the infinitely odious nature of an object that 
 stands before you. What can this light and this 
 manifestation be for, but that you might not have 
 need to look up into the darkness for an autho- 
 rity, from reasons unknown, to determine your 
 sentiments and action ? And is it rational, and 
 can it be safe, that the clear evidence which has 
 thus been given, in order to define for you '4 
 
438 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 scheme of duty with the advantage of being 
 independent of the mystery, should be rejected 
 that you may revert to that very mystery for a 
 determination of your duty, — or rather for an 
 authority to conclude that you have none ? Or 
 would you, both despising this light and defying 
 that darkness, aspire to surmount the region of 
 mystery itself, ascend into the light around the 
 throne of heaven, and, sharer of Sovereign 
 Intelligence, enter into God's own reasons for 
 permitting the evil ? But even that transcendent 
 illumination would not authorize the principle of 
 action that because God suffers the continuance 
 of an evil, you shall abstain from hostility against 
 it. For there would be a further expansion for 
 that light to reach, namely, an understanding 
 also of his reasons for requiring from his rational 
 creatures an active enmity to all evil, notwith- 
 standing his sufferance of it, and an apprehension 
 of the consistency between that requirement and 
 that sufferance. Your presuming, therefore, in 
 contempt of that consistency, and on a pretence 
 of homage to one part of his reasons, to contra- 
 vene another part of them, — that part from which 
 his injunction proceeds, — would be a flagrant 
 impiety ; and would convict you of a virtual 
 alliance with the evil to which those reasons and 
 that injunction could not move your hostility. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, that far from any 
 tendency to such an alliance, you are, as an 
 indispensable part and proof of your fidelity to 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 439 
 
 God, a mortal foe of this foe to him, in every 
 estimate of your judgment and every sentiment 
 of your heart ; and that the only exemption 
 sought, on the plea of the divine permission of 
 the evil, is, that you may be excused, at least 
 for the present, from active measures that would 
 but expend and waste your feeble strength, on 
 that which the almighty strength spares. 
 
 Now in the first place, there seems to be a 
 groundless assumption implied here, namely the 
 continuance of this permission indefinitely into 
 futurity ; whereas, for any thing that can be 
 known to you, hostile means put in action at this 
 period may coincide with a divine decree to has- 
 ten the termination of that mysterious suffer- 
 ance : and then, whatever were the natural 
 inadequacy of those means, they would seem 
 to have caught the fire of Gideon's lamps, and 
 be made to flame out with supernatural power of 
 rout and confusion to the host of pagan gods. 
 
 But in the next place, you cannot consistently 
 acknowledge that the circumstance of the divine 
 permission of this dreadful system of delusion 
 affords no particle of ground for conciHation to 
 it, but leaves you under the full obligation of a 
 mortal enmity, — and at the same time claim 
 from that circumstance an exemption from prac- 
 tical efforts against it. What indeed is its per^ 
 mission but simply its existence ? — in virtue of 
 which there can be no exemption from the duty 
 of attacking it which would not be equally an 
 
440 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 exemption from all duty whatever in the form 
 of opposition and conflict ; which therefore 
 would not confer an universal inviolabihty on 
 evil, and end practically in the maxim, that the 
 more evil there is in the world, the less there is 
 for the servants of God to do. And yet, you 
 are saying, their feeling, in this state of exemp- 
 tion, should be the same as if they had a great 
 deal to do, and a mighty host to fight. While, 
 with respect at least to the giant evil at present 
 in view, you would plead that they may remain 
 in inaction, they ought nevertheless, you will 
 say, to glow with the actuating principle. But 
 then of what use is that principle except to 
 disturb their repose ? That they should be 
 inflamed, as you acknowledge they should, 
 against what is working infinite mischief and 
 misery to a large portion of the human race, 
 and yet should in point of action remain at 
 peace with it, would not only be an inconsistency 
 and absurdity, but would also be an uneasy and 
 mortifying state. Vain passion of christian zeal ! 
 illusory and almost penal fire fi'om heaven ! ani- 
 mating the heart but to consume it, if there 
 should be no practical mode and machinery for 
 conveying outward its energy to strike against 
 the hated object. To have the mind beset and 
 filled, as by main force, with the revolting images 
 of pagan abominations, and to know that this 
 infernal usurpation triumphs in the slavery of mil- 
 lions of our common family, and yet, the while. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 441 
 
 to submit to be unfurnished with expedients 
 of devout revenge ; to have no arrows, no 
 powder of throwing reflected convergent sun- 
 beams, no missiles charged with the elements 
 most noxious to a malignant nature ; would be 
 felt as a hard imposition by a man of zeal, who 
 would dread to have his soul, in reference to the 
 service of God, in the condition of a hero in 
 chains. What shall we think, then, of a servant 
 of God desiring as an exemption and a privilege 
 to be allowed thus to expend away the vital 
 force of his spirit without action ? We cannot 
 believe that he has any of that zealous emotion 
 which he pretends. No, you must not profess 
 to feel and fulfil a duty of enmity in spirit against 
 the permitted evil, and at the same time ac- 
 knowledge no duty of offensive exertion. The 
 true animosity would be so intent on some 
 means of action, that it is certain the state of 
 feeling which persuades to decline such means is 
 far too placable toward what is insulting God 
 and destroying man. 
 
 But it is still more plainly to our purpose, as 
 against this religious fatalism, to allege the mat- 
 ter of fact, that though it has been the mysterious 
 will of the Supreme Governor to permit such 
 great evils in the earth, it has as evidently 
 been his will to maintain, in his own proceed- 
 ings, a continual war against them. Why have 
 there been so many vindictive interpositions of 
 his among the inhabitants of the world ? Let 
 
442 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 the memorials of cities, and tribes, and nations, 
 and in one instance a world, destroyed, testify 
 whether he has set men the example of peace 
 v/ith irreligion and iniquity. What is the in- 
 scription on the monuments of beings that his 
 vengeance has smitten ? What has been the 
 interpretation required to be put on all the 
 formidable signs held out to deter, and all the 
 plagues that have followed when those signs 
 warned in vain ? The victims of those plagues, 
 and the witnesses of their infliction, could not 
 say that the denunciations had been lying signs 
 and oracles, in demanding to be heard as hea- 
 ven's protest against the evils to which the will 
 of man had been permitted to abandon him. 
 
 Thus we have the action of the Divine Being 
 giving a rule for that of his rational subjects, in 
 respect to the moral evil that infests the world ; 
 or rather impressing an awful sanction on the 
 laws in which he has commanded their resist- 
 ance to it. Each of these commands is against 
 something which his unsearchable wisdom has 
 withheld his omnipotence from preventing or 
 instantly exterminating. But his servants are 
 to obey in silence. Well indeed might they feel 
 an alarming sentiment at hearing so very many 
 things recounted for them to be committed in 
 deadly strife against; but what would be the 
 piety, or the prudence, or the consequence, of a 
 remonstrance to him against so severe a voca- 
 tion, on the plea that himself had permitted, and 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 443 
 
 could have prevented, every thing that he was 
 thus imperatively involving them in painful con- 
 flict with over every step of ground till they 
 should fall into the grave ? 
 
 We repeat, that the whole course of the ex- 
 traordinary divine interference among men has 
 been in the direction, and has commanded 
 human spirits, on their allegiance, to concur in 
 the direction, which we are endeavouring to 
 give to your zeal. In visions and oracles sent 
 to patriarchs ; in deliverances and avenging 
 judgments ; in the miraculous suspensions of 
 the laws of nature ; in institutions of religion ; 
 in the illuminations of prophets and apostles ; 
 in the excitement of the best men to the most 
 invincible pertinacity of warfare ; in the mission 
 of angels ; and, transcendently above all, in the 
 '' manifestation of the Son of God to destroy the 
 works of the Devil," — in all these forms of 
 the divine dispensation, and in all the operation 
 that has been in progress from them to this 
 hour, one spirit breathes, one perpetual emana- 
 tion of divine will and agency against that which 
 will, nevertheless, be permitted to retain, but 
 with lessening power, an existence on the earth 
 till a very late period, when the " Lord shall con- 
 sume it with the breath of his mouth, and destroy 
 it with the brightness of his coming." — Such has 
 been the spirit of all the Divine Intervention. 
 The sun is not more conspicuous by his own 
 light, than this character of the religious economy. 
 
444 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 Now then for a professed servant of God to 
 refuse acting in conformity to this entire ten- 
 dency of his cause, and to justify himself on the 
 ground of the divine permission of that which 
 the cause is directed against, what is it but, in 
 effect, to say to the Supreme Governor, — I 
 behold two views of thy government ; there is 
 thy sufferance of an awful array and amount of 
 evils ; and there is a system of thy dispensations 
 constituted to work in most direct and abso- 
 lute opposition to them. The impossibility of 
 apprehending the unity of principle of these 
 contrasted parts of thy government throws a 
 dark mystery on the one of them. But with 
 me, unlike my fellow-mortals, the mystery rests 
 on the latter view, on the economy of inter- 
 positions, enactments, and mandates for resist- 
 ance to the evil; whereas the reason for its 
 permission is so plain to me, that I can, in 
 dissent from all thy faithful servants since the 
 world began, adopt it as my rule of conduct. 
 In pursuance of this adoption, I dare to believe 
 thou art, in truth, not so much the enemy of this 
 same Evil, as is pretended, even in thy own 
 revelation ; and that I shall, upon a certain 
 secret understanding, please thee fully as well 
 by declining to join in an attack upon it, as by 
 devoting to the utmost my active forces to 
 cooperate against it, in a war which I do at the 
 same time perceive clearly that thou thyself, for 
 .what reason of state I cannot conjecture, hast 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 445 
 
 raised and maintained with a palpable and con- 
 tinual interference. 
 
 Let us suppose him to act in this spirit toward 
 his own soul. When he looks there, he sees 
 there is a proportion, a lamentable one, of 
 " that abominable thing" which has rendered the 
 world so horrid a scene. But the Almighty- 
 power has permitted its existence there. What 
 then ? Can he on that account remain quiet, 
 while it is poisoning the essence of his being, 
 and feel as if it were a homage to God to 
 second, if we may so express it, that permission ? 
 With plain sad proof of the very active quality 
 of the malignant infester, which seems also to 
 become, even while he is looking at it, (if under 
 a suspension of resistance,) sensibly stronger, by 
 the force of a principle of augmentation alto- 
 gether indefinite if left to its own action, and 
 which tells him, as with a demon's voice, that 
 his soul is the intended victim, can he calmly 
 contemplate this permitted state and operation, 
 just as an inexplicable phenomenon of the divine 
 government ? And if he were to pretend reve- 
 rential submission, what manner of god could he 
 deem himself adoring, that would be pleased 
 with such a sacrifice ? Unless his pretensions 
 to religion are false, and his soul is actually sur- 
 rendering to perdition, he will, at the sight of 
 this mournful predicament of his own spirit, be 
 ardently intent on an application of the means 
 of resisting the destroyer. And he will be at 
 
446 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 once alarmed and indignant if he should per- 
 ceive his mind admitting, under some influence 
 of the consideration that God has not prevented 
 the pernicious fact of sin within him, any slighter 
 estimate of the required energy and promptitude 
 of the resistance, than that which should be 
 commensurate to the evil itself, viewed abso- 
 lutely, in all its atrocity and activity. 
 
 But now let him revert to the heathen slaves 
 of darkness and sin. — If it would be cruelty to 
 his own soul, to make the lighter of the invasion, 
 or the means of expulsion, of its deadly enemy, 
 because God has not precluded nor exterminated 
 it, he may be reminded, and all the friends of 
 Christianity may be reminded, of the obligation 
 implied in the second great commandment, 
 *^ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." 
 
 Try once more how strongly you can bring 
 upon your minds the reality of an immense mul- 
 titude of spirits, of your own nature, existing on 
 a remote continent. You can by an effort of 
 thought come to as realizing a sense of being 
 placed amidst the countenances, the vital warmth, 
 the talk, the worship, the infelicities, of people 
 at the distance of some thousands of leagues, as 
 of the inhabitants of an adjacent part of your 
 own country. With as absolute an assurance 
 of fact as if you were at this hour in India, and 
 were just now descrying a tyger crouching to 
 spring on one ill-fated person, or a serpent 
 throwing its folds round another, you can behold 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 447 
 
 the prodigiously numerous tribe of actual living 
 immortal essences, images and counterparts of 
 your own, as it were watched for, fascinated, 
 sprung upon, grappled, by things arisen in fearful 
 eruption from the bottomless pit. Look at them 
 involved in the power of the Old Serpent. — If 
 we might enforce the representation by a simile, 
 suppose the case, that a professedly benevolent 
 man, sojourning in that country, happened to be 
 in a spot where he saw a tyger, eyeing with 
 deadly glare the intended but unapprehensive 
 victim, or a serpent in the very act of contracting 
 itself to dart on an unwarned human object ; 
 and suppose too, that this spectator had an 
 advantage of position which exempted him from 
 danger, and also that he had in his hands the 
 most efficient means for striking the monster 
 with death or sudden fright ; or that at the very 
 least he could alarm the person in peril. Now 
 what sort of philanthropist shall we represent if 
 we next suppose, that while looking at this crea- 
 ture of living flesh and blood, who is perhaps 
 approaching every instant nearer the spot where 
 death is lurking, he cooly thinks what a hopeless 
 and fearful plight ; muses why the God of nature 
 should suffer beasts of prey and serpents in a 
 world made for man ; takes time, if there he 
 time, for the conclusion that, at all events, since 
 God does suffer them, men must of course be 
 devoured by them ; and so, quietly awaits and 
 witnesses the catastrophe, highly self-complacent. 
 
448 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 perhaps, in the sort of selfish piety with which he 
 goes away blessing the Providence which had not 
 doomed him to be the victim. 
 
 We need not make the application. We will 
 only suggest whether, since the whole account- 
 ableness for all the error and wickedness of 
 paganism must rest somewhere, the alleviation 
 obtained before the Supreme Judge by the hea- 
 thens who have been denied the means of deliver- 
 ance from so wretched a condition, may not be 
 at the expense of those who shall have refused to 
 try those means upon them ; and then whether, 
 in the solemn time of adjudgment, these latter 
 will dare to reflect off this accountableness for 
 omission on the Judge himself, in the allegation 
 that the evil was of his own permission, — when 
 they will have the consciousness that he gave 
 them means of at least attempting its destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 This torpedo kind of fatalism, from the domi- 
 nion of which we should be glad to see the active 
 powers of all good men rescued, may somewhat 
 change its tone ; still, however, aiming to elude 
 the requisition to come forth in the activity of 
 the cause. It may affect to recover from the 
 kind of hopeless dead prostration of feeling at 
 the awful fact of God's permission of so dreadful 
 an evil, into adoration of his power as almighty 
 to destroy it. And how magnificently that 
 power shall be glorified, and how emphatically 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 449 
 
 man shall be degraded, when it is hoped that 
 some exemption from service may be suborned 
 from the contrast ! Feelings of indolence com- 
 bined with ideas of the sovereignty of God will 
 form a state of mind prolific of such reflections 
 as these : Of what consequence can be the trivial 
 efforts of such insignificant creatures, as coopera- 
 ting or not with the energy of an almighty 
 power ? What signify, in a great process of 
 nature, some few rain-drops or dew-drops the 
 more or the less ? What are we, to be talking, 
 in strains of idle pomp, of converting the people 
 of half a world? How reduced to contempt, 
 how vanishing from perception, will be the 
 effects of all our petty toils, when mightier 
 powers shall come into action ; as the footsteps 
 of insects and birds are effaced and lost under 
 the trample of elephants. Were it not even 
 temerity to affect to take the course where the 
 chariot of Omnipotence is to drive ; as if we 
 would intrude to share the achievements proper 
 to a God, or fancy that something magnificent 
 which he has to do, will not be done unless we 
 are there ? No, let our text be, as best becomes 
 the humility of mortals and sinners, " Be still, 
 and know that I am God." If he wills the con- 
 version of the heathen nations, he has such 
 powers and means for accomplishing his purpose 
 as may well allow a sabbath to the hands of all 
 his servants, while their souls may adore him in 
 his triumphs. — AH very true ; and so in the 
 
 GG 
 
450 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 literal warfare referred to in scripture cited at the 
 beginning of our discourse, there were means of 
 overthrowing the heathen invaders without the 
 assistance of the people of Meroz, or any other 
 people ; for the stars in their courses were to 
 fight against Sisera. It was not because he 
 needed them for combatants, that the God of 
 armies had required their presence in battle. — 
 After what has been already said of the employ- 
 ment of feeble means to produce a triumphantly 
 disproportionate eflPect, it is superfluous to make 
 any other answer to this indolence, or indiffer- 
 ence, or pride, or all of them together, pleading 
 under the semblance of humble piety, than an 
 admonitory suggestion, that, as it has been 
 hitherto God's usual method to employ human 
 instrumentality in his great works of beneficence, 
 his now declining to do so would but be the 
 alarming expression of his judgment, that the 
 human agents are now not worth being employed 
 on earth, nor being translated to heaven. Well 
 might a dread of the fatal privilege of exemption 
 under such a judgment suppress the disposition 
 to seek, and the willingness to accept, such a 
 privilege on any ground whatever. 
 
 The religious fatalism, in a still further modi- 
 fication, somewhat distinguishable from these 
 preceding descriptions, will make professions of 
 anticipating with great delight the certain accom- 
 plishment of the glorious revolution in question, 
 when God's selected time shall arrive. Then, too. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 451 
 
 as in former great changes, there will be noble 
 work, and enough of it, for such humble instru- 
 ments as men to perform : meanwhile, beware 
 of premature attempts, and wait for the signs 
 that the time is come. Language like this has 
 been, within the memory of many of you, among 
 the common-places of our christian communities. 
 If there be still some cautious christians who 
 cannot willingly let it grow obsolete, we might 
 ask them whether they have exactly figured in 
 their minds in what manner the expected grand 
 process is to begin, or what appearances they 
 could accept, as signs that the period is come 
 when their efforts would not be like a vain 
 attempt to constrain the fulfilment of a divine 
 purpose before its appointed time. Are there to 
 be extraordinary meteors, significantly passing 
 eastward as they vanish ? Are they to hear that 
 the temples of Seeva are sunk suddenly in ruins 
 at the stroke of thunder? Or, still more of 
 prodigy, are all the chief statesmen, and mercan- 
 tile men, and military men, especially concerned 
 in the affairs of the east, to become with one 
 accord inspired with a fervent zeal for the chris- 
 tianizing of Asia, perhaps impelled literally to a 
 spiritual crusade against Hindoo idolatry ? 
 
 Perhaps they will, after all, disclaim the expec- 
 tation of any extraordinary signals from heaven, 
 when it occurs to them that they are in danger 
 of the impiety of demanding a specific change in 
 God's manner of declaring his mind to men. And 
 
 GG 2 
 
452 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 probably they will profess that they wait for no 
 other tokens than such as may afford a rational 
 presumption, according to the rules of judgment 
 commonly admitted amongst wise men. Then 
 we may venture to ask why they should not 
 accept, as something like the required signs, 
 certain of the circumstances that have attended, 
 thus far, this christian enterprise in India. Is it 
 to be taken as a rebuke from Heaven, on a rash 
 anticipation of Heaven's designs, that our mis- 
 sionaries have been kept in their positions and 
 their work with a general impunity and freedom, 
 notwithstanding that during many years of the 
 time there prevailed against them a systematic 
 unrelenting hostihty of spirit, in authorities which 
 in all human appearance might have crushed 
 them in a moment, and were subject to no visi- 
 ble cause of restraint on their will, — a preserva- 
 tion reminding us of that of Daniel in the lions* 
 den? Or, that the inactivity of fanatic malice, and 
 the considerable favour, experienced among the 
 natives, have seemed to betray some divine coer- 
 cion put for their sake on the lions and the furies 
 of direct paganism itself, to the disappointment 
 of the christian paganism ? Or, that they have 
 been preserved in the excellence of the christian 
 character in a scene presenting many temptations 
 to forfeit the distinction, and while bearing the 
 moral responsibility of an undertaking in which 
 that forfeiture would have been fatal ? Or, that 
 by the multipHcity and extent of their labours 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 453 
 
 and attainments they are sometimes recalling to 
 our imagination the hundred-handed giant of 
 fable ? Or, that between the produce of their 
 own exertions and the supplies from the religious 
 public, pecuniary means have never failed for the 
 constantly enlarging prosecution of the design, — 
 even a very great disaster having operated as if 
 the fall of an edifice should bring a concealed 
 treasure of gold to light ?* Or, that while the 
 sacred scriptures have been spreading with 
 rapidity among the nations of the East, the 
 undertaking which has given them this range of 
 mischief to the gods, has produced several 
 marked benefits in our religious societies at 
 home ; especially in the point of helping to 
 break up, by the introduction of so many new 
 subjects connected with religion, the monotony 
 which too much prevailed in their religious ser- 
 vices, topics, and feelings? 
 
 What is the interpretation which our sooth- 
 sayers of the colder religious climate put on 
 these signs, conjoined, as we are gratified to 
 view them conjoined, with the enlarging mission- 
 ary exertions and successes of our brethren of 
 other religious denominations? Or will they 
 sagely observe to us that, in the great concourse 
 of casualties it is at any time possible enough for 
 
 * Alluding to the fire which, some years since, reduced to 
 ashes the printing-office at Serampore, with its large literary 
 stores and other materials for the service of the mission. 
 
454 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 a sanguine spirit to descry and bring into con- 
 junction a number of things which may be 
 dekisively converted into intimations, that a fa- 
 vourite project of its own is also the intention of 
 Heaven. When they have said this, they may 
 consider whether they should not, in their 
 solicitous veneration for Heaven's appointment 
 of times and seasons, abet the gods and their 
 priests in an appeal to the Lord of the world 
 against these missionary intruders, as guilty of 
 insubordination to Him, in having presumed to 
 " come to torment them before the time." 
 
 It has been the lot of several of the persons 
 who have believed themselves to be obeying the 
 will of the Supreme Authority, by leaving this 
 country in prosecution of the christian enterprise 
 in Hindoostan, to die in the service. They had 
 devoted themselves so to die, and rejoiced in the 
 confidence that they were also devoted by a su- 
 perior decree. In what manner may we believe 
 that their departing spirits have been received by 
 their great Master? Has it been a qualified 
 '' Well done, good and faithful servant," that 
 they have heard? — as if he should say, — 
 Feeble in judgment, rash in temperament, but 
 honest in intention, you are pardoned through a 
 peculiar extension of mercy ; and are admitted 
 now to a state of illumination in which you may 
 cultivate the humility that was so defective on 
 earth, and see, in the progressive disclosure of 
 your Lord's designs, how long his servants ought 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 455 
 
 to have repressed the presumptuous forwardness 
 of their zeal. 
 
 No, this could not be their reception in a 
 world where they were soon to be joined by the 
 first-fruits of that very zeal, those converts from 
 idolatry who, subsequently to some of their 
 teachers, have died in the faith of Christ ; and 
 carried demonstrative living proof to heaven, that 
 the true religion had not in a premature and 
 officious zeal been conveyed sooner than the di- 
 vine appointment had commissioned it to go, 
 sooner than the divine power was ready to accom- 
 pany it, to a region whither some of its professed 
 friends would not have contributed to send it. 
 And if we may imagine the nature of the emotion 
 in the great assembly, at the arrival of these 
 spirits from the dominions of idolatry, we shall 
 not believe it to have been the repressed felicita- 
 tion which should welcome them as but solitary 
 exceptions to a destiny, regarded as still perma- 
 nently to abide on the immense division of the 
 human race whence they came. Repressed, we 
 say ; for we could not conceive of an unmingled 
 delight in receiving them as translated thither 
 chiefly to exemplify that sovereignty of God 
 which he will manifest in every department of his 
 government, by suspending in rare, and only 
 rare instances, his most general appointments ; 
 as two individuals have been exempted from the 
 general law of mortality. The sentiment without 
 which the joy would be languid, must have been 
 
456 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 that which should hail them as signs that a de- 
 creed change of dispensation, a new aspect of the 
 divine sovereignty, is beginning or approaching 
 . to shine on a dark . hemisphere of the v^^orld; 
 that death is becoming incomparably more tribu- 
 tary to heaven ; and that the ancient barrier be- 
 tween the realms of Asia and the kingdom of 
 
 ^ eternal glory is beginning to break down. 
 
 f^-— -^i\ 'I'^^^ indulgence of thought in representing to 
 I 18 28 if J ourselves the feelings experienced in an invisible 
 ^^lv^>y and superior world, is quite within the just range 
 of our contemplation of the subject. It is a 
 noble distinction of religion that, (once admitted 
 as true,) it affords a rational substance to bear 
 out the most imaginative exercise of thought. 
 It is a ground on which our ideal excursions may 
 venture, without offence to reason, such a length 
 as they could not on inferior subjects without 
 abandonment to poetical extravagance or mere 
 vanity. It verifies to us as a reality a solemn 
 relation between us and another economy of 
 existence ; and constitutes a vital intermedium 
 through which we have the sense of a real 
 interest in beings and a state beyond the sphere 
 of this world. Thus religion, believed and felt, 
 is the amplitude of our moral and intellectual 
 nature. And how wretched an object therefore 
 is a mind, especially of thought, sensibility, and 
 genius, condemned to that poverty and insulation 
 which infidelity inflicts, by annihilating around 
 it the medium of a sensible interest in the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 457 
 
 existence, the emotions, the activities, of a higher 
 order of beings ! Our Lord tells us of great and 
 happy intelligences in the invisible w^orld vy^ho 
 rejoice over a sinner vs^hen he repents. It is quite 
 rational, then, to have indulged our imagination 
 for a moment in ideas of the reception, in that 
 scene, of those first converts from paganism, in 
 the course of our Mission, w^ho have been followed 
 in death by some of the persons v^hose labours 
 w^ere crowned with this success. And we are 
 especially w^arranted in the most vivid imagina- 
 tion which it is possible to form, of the emotions 
 of these proclaimers and these converts of the 
 truth, in their mutual recognition, when thus 
 reunited, and in communion with the preceding 
 believers, apostles, and confessors. If but a 
 comparatively faint apprehension of the emphasis 
 of those congratulations could be brought, by 
 some momentary illapse, on the souls of the most 
 neutral or even the most hostile spectators of the 
 attempt which has been the cause of such emo- 
 tions in the happiest society, might it not 
 instantly turn to grief at the thought that those 
 felicities had owed none of that rapture to 
 them ? 
 
 And let us remind those professed christians, 
 whose coldness toward a great project of evange- 
 lization would justify itself under a plea of re- 
 verently awaiting the disclosure of the divine 
 purposes, that by their profession they aspire to 
 join ere long that company to which departed 
 
458 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 missionaries and their converts have been added. 
 It may be the destination of some of them to 
 leave this world at nearly the time appointed for 
 the removal by death of other of these indefati- 
 gable labourers, and of their proselytes. In the 
 reflections w^hich may be excited by such an idea, 
 will there be no sentiment partaking of appre- 
 hension ? No mortifying anticipation arises at 
 the thought of entering the other world in com- 
 pany with an angelic being, the different rank of 
 his nature precluding all comparison, or all pain- 
 ful humiliation at the difference if comparison 
 were made. But methinks there is something 
 to cause great displacency, and even a degree of 
 intimidation, in the thought of approaching the 
 most illustrious society in the universe in the 
 company of spirits of our own nature and our own 
 times, trained under nearly similar privileges and 
 instructions, or possibly the very same, but who 
 through superior zeal shall have left us in a 
 great disparity. Think whether it be impossible 
 that, even on the passage to the superior king- 
 dom, there might be an unwelcome sense of 
 contrast. Supposing the transition to be con- 
 temporary and mutually witnessed, it were 
 inevitable there should be a perception of a signal 
 difference, between those passing from the con- 
 clusion of a course of devoted enterprise to 
 extend the kingdom of their Lord into the 
 regions of inveterate cruel superstition, by ef- 
 forts whose commencing success is attested by 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 459 
 
 redeemed spirits of heathens gone before or 
 accompanying them, — and those persons who, 
 though having been in circumstances httle 
 different from theirs in early hfe, and having 
 professed the same devotedness to the christian 
 cause, shall yet be conscious of having scarcely 
 made an effort for its advancement ; of hardly 
 having given their cordial good wishes to this 
 undertaking in its service ; of even having, possi- 
 bly, been almost pleased that the small number, 
 as yet, of conversions from heathenism should 
 seem to afford some advantage to the imputers 
 of enthusiasm to the project. May not the 
 thought of the feelings possible to be excited at 
 such a time by such a contrast, suggest to chris- 
 tians whose faculties seem more readily appli- 
 cable to the exercise of finding objections to 
 animated schemes of christian experiment, than 
 to that of devising means for their success, a 
 new topic for solicitude and perhaps for prayer, 
 namely, that they may be permitted to enter the 
 superior state in a way that shall not immedi- 
 ately bring them in communication or compari- 
 son with their brethren ascending from the war 
 against idolatry ? 
 
 We may be allowed, at the least, to suggest, 
 that in order to be entirely free from the antici- 
 pation of any reflections, tending to throw a 
 shade over the joy of passing into the great 
 Master's presence at nearly the same time 
 as those devoted spirits, there must be the 
 
460 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 testimony of conscience that in some other mayiner 
 his service is zealously prosecuted. The man 
 indifferent or opposed to the enterprise in which 
 these men are to die, but who yet professes to 
 take an interest in the advancement of religion 
 and the general good, can avoid the apprehen- 
 siveness of such a future comparison only by 
 having evidence to himself that, though projects 
 which seem to him to partake somewhat of 
 enthusiasm are not exactly adapted to seize his 
 mind, he is diligently intent on promoting the 
 cause of God in plainer, less adventurous, and 
 let him call them, if he will, soberer methods. 
 But, in truth, experience is not in favour of our 
 expecting a very active zeal for extending Chris- 
 tianity in any, even the ordinary methods, from 
 those who are prompt to impute enthusiasm to 
 the extraordinary ones. 
 
 For ourselves, when we think of those who 
 are thus appointed to fall in the immediate 
 conflict with the powers of paganism, shall we 
 not earnestly desire and pray, that we may be 
 so animated to promote the christian cause in 
 every practicable way, that we may never have 
 reason to wish, as what would have saved us 
 from any such pain of a close comparison at the 
 time of going to the great account, that these 
 men, instead of being our contemporaries, and 
 fellow-countrymen, and neighbours, no more 
 privileged originally than ourselves, had been in 
 the number of those distinguished agents in the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 461 
 
 christian service of other times and countries, 
 whom we can look at and venerate in the dis- 
 tance of history, without having our attention 
 and conscience so directly forced on a compara- 
 tive estimate between them and ourselves ? 
 
 To return, but for one moment, to the repres- 
 sive influence on some good men's principles of 
 action and hope, from the idea of the sovereignty 
 of the divine appointments, we may observe, 
 that the most assured belief in the divine de- 
 crees, as comprehending all things, has not 
 necessarily the effect of paralyzing the active 
 powers. There is no denying that such is its 
 tendency in cold, inanimate, indolent spirits, 
 that are really indifferent to the objects de- 
 manding their exertion. And so with respect to 
 any doctrine of religious or moral truth, there 
 is a possible state of mind which is apt to take 
 from it an injurious impression. But let there 
 be an earnest interest about the objects in ques- 
 tion, and then the zeal and activity will be incited 
 rather than repressed by the faith in all-com- 
 prehending and absolute decrees. Accordingly 
 it has been, we think, for the greater proportion, 
 by decided predestinarians, that the most ardent 
 and efficient exertions of religious innovation 
 have been made upon the inveterate evils of the 
 world. That they were not checked and chilled 
 by this article of their faith, is the least that 
 their conduct testified of its effect. Not only 
 
462 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 were they not withheld from driving impetuously 
 against the hated thing before them by any sur- 
 mise whether it might not, for the present, be 
 guarded invisibly by the shield of a decree. 
 Not only did they dart their weapons, when the 
 enemy appeared to be within their reach, without 
 being stopped by any suspicion of an optical 
 deception in this seeming nearness, this possi- 
 bility of striking it. This is only supposing 
 them not to be the less energetic in consequence 
 of their predestinarian faith ; it is what they 
 might be, supposing them the while to forget it. 
 But it was not as forgetting their principle, and 
 being actuated, for the time, solely by the inde- 
 pendent force of different ones, that they so 
 nobly exerted themselves. No, they acted in 
 the full recollection of it, as a source of invigo- 
 ration no less indispensable than for Antaeus to 
 touch the earth. It was in the element of this 
 doctrine of decrees that they felt their impetus 
 the mightier, their weapons the sharper, their 
 aim the surer. 
 
 And while their opponents in belief might be 
 wondering at the phenomenon of such a glow of 
 life, and play of strength, in an element which 
 they had been constantly pronouncing the most 
 mephitic in the whole world of opinion to moral 
 energy, the persons on whom the faith had this 
 influence could have shown how explicable and 
 how far from absurd was such a practical effect, 
 in the case of men in the prosecution of plans 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 463 
 
 for the destruction of what was opposed to the 
 kingdom of God. The first consideration in 
 the matter was the trite and general one, — they 
 were certain that the Almighty will make very 
 great use of human agents in what remains of 
 the course of his dispensations in this world. 
 Next, whatever concealment may rest on the 
 precise nature of his more special determinations, 
 which constitute, so to speak, the divisible por- 
 tions of his one grand design, there can be no 
 question, with believers in revelation, whether 
 that grand design be a progressive demolition of 
 the dreadful tyranny of evil over the human race. 
 Now that was what they were intent upon ; and 
 they were putting themselves directly into his 
 hands as willing instruments to be applied to that 
 use. And was it not (they thought) most reason- 
 able to entertain a general assurance that willing 
 agents, offered to him for a purpose which he is 
 determined to accomplish, would have their ap- 
 pointment for effective service? If so many 
 would be required that even repugnant or unde- 
 signing ones would be made to contribute and 
 cooperate, by his constraining and over-ruling 
 Providence, the willing and zealous ones might 
 in all reason be sure of being put to such an use. 
 The disposition itself was inspired, they thought, 
 for the very purpose of adapting them, and the 
 adaptation given with the intention of employing 
 them. Thus, on the certainty of their coinci- 
 dence with God's intention, considered generally. 
 
464 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 they justified a confidence that they had a 
 general appointment to do something in his great 
 work, — an appointment, that is to say, to pro- 
 mote it in some way or other. 
 
 But no man who is powerfully actuated can 
 stop in generals. Those devout predestinarians, 
 those genuine adorers of the God of decrees, 
 were earnestly attentive to the manner in which 
 his general and comprehensive design was seen, 
 in his revelation, resolving itself into defined 
 parts, and taking the form of several great pur- 
 poses, distinguishable from one another, while 
 all combined in the entire design. Of these 
 several purposes, thus distinguished and an- 
 nounced, there was probably one which was of 
 a nature more specially to interest their feelings, 
 and draw to this particular direction the zeal and 
 cooperation which were in devoted readiness to 
 coincide with the divine intentions as regarded 
 generally. And when they felt their general 
 coincidence of spirit thus determined to one 
 marked division of the divine plan, they ac- 
 quired a still more animated assurance of their 
 appointment to a practicable and successful ser- 
 vice, in proportion as they thus came more 
 distinctly to see how they might cooperate in 
 that design. 
 
 Nor was this all ; for when they thus saw one 
 particular part of the scheme of the divine inten- 
 tion manifested with considerable definiteness, 
 they felt an irresistible tendency to make it 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 465 
 
 more definite stilly by resolving this also into 
 particulars. For example ; if revelation has de- 
 clared the destruction of superstition to be one 
 leading object comprehended in the great gene- 
 ral intention, their zeal has impelled them to 
 regard this declaration as bearing with special 
 emphasis on those particular forms of supersti- 
 tion which they were most intent on destroy- 
 ing. Those particular forms, they have said, so 
 eminently hateful, cannot but be very marked 
 objects of the exterminating intention of the 
 supreme will. It has seemed to these men as if 
 the whole force of the general decree were con- 
 verging to strike just where they wished to 
 strike. And as the principle of destruction is 
 to be conveyed through the means of human 
 agents, who so likely to be employed, they said, 
 as we that are already on fire to destroy ? Be- 
 yond all doubt it is exactly here that we have 
 our decreed and unalterable allotment. Exactly 
 here it is, that our will and the supreme will 
 coalesce to a purpose which therefore defies all 
 chance and all created power* 
 
 But their assurance that their intention, as 
 fixed on a particular selected object, was de- 
 cidedly identical with that of the Almighty, 
 did not authorize itself solely by thus giving 
 to those declarations which express the divine 
 purpose in comprehensive terms, a more deter- 
 minate bearing on a special object. For some 
 inspired declarations were found which were 
 
 H H 
 
466 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 themselves of special import. They evidently- 
 pointed out, by their own terms, with much 
 definiteness, certain distinct parts and special 
 processes in the general scheme which Provi- 
 dence will execute. These appeared as depart- 
 ments or sections, within wider divisions of 
 operation, which are still themselves but parts 
 of the grand scheme ; as, for example, the 
 foredoomed destruction of the Popish super- 
 stition, though a thing of such magnitude, is 
 only a portion of the divine plan for the destruc- 
 tion of superstition in general, which is yet but 
 a part of the entire scheme announced for 
 accomplishment. The devout men who have 
 sought their incitement and their strength in 
 the decrees of heaven, have often beheved that 
 they saw, in some of these more defined and 
 special portions, in these comparatively distinct 
 representations of movements which are to fulfil 
 on earth the purposes of heaven, the very image 
 of such designs as the genius of their zeal was 
 shaping forth. It was quite certain at least that 
 those appointed operations must at any rate 
 involve such as they were projecting; and the 
 predicted success of the whole must be the suc- 
 cess of the included parts. But, they said again, 
 there are predestined agents ; and who still so 
 likely as men who shall be ready with their 
 life and their death for precisely that service? 
 The inference was not far off; — These very 
 plans and proceedings of ours are decreed, as 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 467 
 
 portions of the sovereign scheme ; we and our 
 work are a part of eternal destiny. 
 
 By this short process, through a general con- 
 fidence of some predestinated appointment into 
 a determination to one special service, we may 
 believe that some of the distinguished actors in 
 a good cause have gone into their career. At 
 the same time it is to be acknowledged, as pro- 
 bable in respect to others of them, and possibly 
 the greater number, that they have had no 
 process- to pass through, no need to verify their 
 commission by speculative inferences from the 
 general designs of the Almighty, no waiting and 
 deliberating to know their destined vocation. 
 It came on them by the immediate force of 
 circumstances and events, that provoked them 
 to action. Their attention was seized, and their 
 ardour excited, at the sight of some one great 
 evil to be combated, or good to be achieved; 
 and that ardour itself, combining with their 
 predestinarian faith, created the assurance of 
 their destination. This is the very thing, they 
 said, which we came into the world for; and 
 this, unless accomplished sooner, we must pro- 
 secute till we go out of it. 
 
 We are not here called upon to suggest the 
 cautions against the possible excesses and dan- 
 gers of this confident assurance in good men 
 that their designs are specifically identical with 
 the divine purposes. Our object was to show, 
 that the consideration of sovereign decrees, 
 
 HH 2 
 
468 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 which cold unwilling minds are so ready to 
 allege for their inertness, and which is so com- 
 monly asserted to have necessarily that conse- 
 quence, may, on the contrary, become one of 
 the mightiest forces for action. It is this that 
 can make, but under a far nobler modification, 
 the man that the poets have delighted to feign, 
 who would maintain his purpose though the 
 world fell in ruins around him. A missionary 
 against the paganism of the Hindoos may feel 
 an animation specially appropriate to the service, 
 in this assurance that his intention is the inten- 
 tion of God. Those people fortify themselves in 
 the notion, or the pretence, that they are imme- 
 diately actuated by some deity, and therefore 
 fulfilling, under a law of necessity, his deter- 
 minations : the missionary will feel peculiar 
 invigoration in advancing to the assault of a 
 superstition with such a principle in its front, in 
 the force of a principle analogous in form, but 
 of heavenly essence. While they will have it, 
 that he may as well spare the efforts on them 
 which it were his more proper business to level 
 at the gods, if he could reach them, the energy 
 of his soul will reply, that he accepts the chal- 
 lenge so made for those enthroned abominations, 
 for that he verily believes himself and his con- 
 fraternity to be an Avatar for their destruction. 
 
 We have dwelt too long on this topic of reli- 
 gious fatalism, a term we have employed to 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 469 
 
 signify a perverted application, in reasoning and 
 feeling, of the doctrine which acknowledges 
 God's sovereign and unalterable predestination 
 of events. Our excuse must be, that these 
 reasonings and feelings are peculiarly apt to 
 suggest themselves in contravention to such 
 claims as those we are at present wishing to 
 exhibit. And besides their own direct force, 
 they lend strength to other objections and re- 
 pugnant feelings not arising from so speculative 
 a source. The meanest of the passions, that 
 can make an opposition to a worthy project, or 
 withhold from it the necessary aid, are very 
 ready to find an excuse, a justification, or even 
 a merit, in a pretended waiting submission to 
 the decrees of heaven. 
 
 Many causes of a nature not implicated with 
 these obscure speculations, are operating to pre- 
 vent or lessen the assistance to such an enter- 
 prise. We may briefly notice one or two. 
 
 If we just name Party-spirit, it is not in order 
 to indulge in any accusatory complaints that our 
 particular undertaking has materially suffered by 
 it.* Doubtless we may be isomewhat the worse 
 
 * The Baptist Mission ; of which the primary establish- 
 ment, at the beginning of 1800, was fixed in the small Danish 
 settlement of Serampore, in consequence of the menacing 
 indications that the British Government would not tolerate, 
 within their own dominions, an attempt to introduce Chris- 
 tianity among the pagans. 
 
470 ON THE P110PAGATION OF 
 
 for it ; but we have as little the inclination as 
 the means for calculating how much. And even 
 were a calculation made and verified of that 
 proportion of pecuniary and other modes of aid 
 which a perfect christian liberality would have 
 awarded to this project, and which party-spirit 
 may have withheld from it, we should still please 
 ourselves with the persuasion, that the greater 
 part of what may have been so averted has pro- 
 bably been devoted to other excellent designs to 
 which we wish all possible success. The history 
 of this portion of the general christian operations 
 of the age, will have little to say of convoys 
 intercepted by selfish allies. We are too confi- 
 dent of the prolonged favour of Providence on 
 our work, and too much pleased at seeing that 
 Providence favouring the exertions of the same 
 tendency made by other sects of the great chris- 
 tian community, to regret not having obtained 
 any one particle of the means which have availed 
 to good in their hands. And we think we have 
 too systematically avoided giving any just cause 
 of jealous reaction to our friends of the other 
 denominations, to be debarred in modesty from 
 denouncing, with unrestrained censure, the spirit 
 which cannot see the merit of a noble object 
 when there is some point of controversy with its 
 promoters, and which would almost rather wish 
 it might be lost than aid them to attain it : a 
 spirit which, in promoting an interest professedly 
 as wide as the world, as liberal as the sun. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 471 
 
 would enviously account success, or the means 
 of success, conferred on a different class of 
 labourers in the same general cause, so much 
 unjustly subtracted from our own connexion and 
 project ; and would avenge on the grand catholic 
 object the petty offences of party, or affronts to 
 individual vanity. 
 
 If the christian communities, most liable to 
 feelings of competition, were asked in what cha- 
 racter they conceive themselves to stand the 
 most prominently forward before the world, as 
 practically verifying the exalted, beneficent, ex- 
 pansive spirit of their religion, it is not improba- 
 ble they would say, it is as conspirers to extend 
 heavenly light and liberty over the heathen 
 world. But if so, how justly we may urge it 
 upon them to beware of degrading this the most 
 magnificent form in which their profession is 
 displayed, by associating with it littlenesses which 
 may make it almost ridiculous. Surely, in thus 
 going forth against the powers of darkness, they 
 would not be found stickHng and stipulating that 
 the grand banner of the cause should be sur- 
 mounted with some petty label of a particular 
 denomination. Such mortals, had they been in 
 the emigration from Egypt, would have been 
 incessantly and jealously busy about the relative 
 proximities of the tribes to the position of the 
 cloudy pillar. A shrewd irreligious looker-on, 
 who can divert himself at the expense of all our 
 sects, and despises this their common object. 
 
472 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 might indulge his malicious humour, in saying, 
 All this bustling activity of consultation, and 
 oratory, and subscription, and travelling, is to 
 go to the account, as you will have it, of a fer- 
 vent zeal for Christianity : what a large share of 
 this costly trouble I should nevertheless be sure 
 to save you, if I could just apply a quencher to 
 so much of this pious heat as consists of sectarian 
 ambition and rivalry. 
 
 We cannot too strongly insist again, that a 
 sense of dignity should spurn these inglorious 
 competitions from the sections of the advanced 
 camp against the grand enemy. Here, at all 
 events, the parties should acknowledge the Truce 
 of God, If they have, and must have, jealousies 
 too sacred to be extinguished, let their indul- 
 gence be reserved for occasions and scenes in 
 which they are not assuming the lofty attitude 
 of a war against the gods. But the great matter, 
 after all, is to be solemnly intent on the object 
 itself, on the good to be done, compared with 
 which, the denomination of the instrument will 
 appear a circumstance vastly trivial. Let all 
 the promoters of these good works be in this 
 state of mind, and then the modes in which the 
 evil spirit in question might display itself will 
 be things only to be figured in the imagination, 
 or sought as facts in the history of former and 
 worse times. For then we shall never actually 
 see a disposition to discountenance a design on 
 account of its originating with an alien sect. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 473 
 
 rather than to favour it for its intrinsic ex- 
 cellence ; nor an eager insisting on points of 
 precedence ; nor a systematic practice of repre- 
 senting the operations of our own sect at their 
 highest amount of ability and effect, and those 
 of another at their lowest ; nor the studied 
 silence of vexed jealousy, which is thinking all 
 the while of what it cannot endure to name ; 
 nor that laboured exaggeration of our magnitude 
 and achievements which most plainly tells what 
 that jealousy is thinking of; nor that manner of 
 hearing of marked and opportune advantages 
 occurring to undertakings of another sect which 
 betrays that a story of disasters would have 
 been fully as welcome ; nor underhand contri- 
 vances for assuming the envied merit of some- 
 thing which another sect has accomplished and 
 never boasted of; nor excitements to exertion 
 expressly on the ground of invidious rivalry, 
 rather than christian emulation ; nor casual 
 defects of courtesy interpreted wilfully into in- 
 tentional hostility, just to give a colour of justice 
 to actual hostility on our part, for which we 
 were prepared, and but watching for a pretext ; 
 nor management and misrepresentation to trepan 
 to our party auxiliary means which might have 
 been intended for theirs. 
 
 While we would earnestly admonish all the 
 promoters of our object to display an example 
 in every point the reverse of such tempers and 
 expedients, we will assure ourselves of the 
 
474 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 favourable dispositions of christians in general 
 toward a design which has its own sphere of 
 operations, in which it has both the happiness 
 and the merit of interfering wit'i no other. It 
 has not, by either interference or ostentation, 
 given any provocation to party jealousy ; and 
 we may add, that we trust it is grown to a 
 strength and an establishment beyond the power 
 of that unfriendly spirit, were it excited, greatly 
 to injure. 
 
 When we mention the Love of Money, as 
 another chief prevention of the required assist- 
 ance to such a cause, we may seem to be naming 
 a thing not more specifically adverse to this 
 than to any and every other beneficent design. 
 A second thought, however, may suggest to you 
 a certain peculiarity of circumstance in the re- 
 sistance of this bad passion to the claims of a 
 scheme for converting heathens. By eminence 
 among the vices which may prevail where the 
 true God is not unknown, this of covetousness 
 is denominated in the word of that God, Idolatry. 
 Now as it is peculiarly against idolatry that the 
 design in question is aimed, the repugnance 
 shown to it by covetousness may be considered 
 as somewhat on the principle of an identity 
 of nature with its enemy. One idolater seems 
 to take up the interest of all idolaters, as if 
 desirous to profit by the warning, that if Satan be 
 divided against himself his kingdom cannot stand. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 475 
 
 Or rather it is instinctively that this com- 
 munity of interest is maintained, and without 
 being fully aware ; for the unhappy mortal, 
 while reading or hearing how millions of people 
 adore shapes of clay, or wood, or stone, or 
 silver, or gold, shall express his wonder how 
 rational creatures can be so besotted ; shall 
 raise his eyes to heaven in astonishment that 
 the Almighty should permit such alienation of 
 understanding, such dominion of the wicked 
 Spirit : and there is no voice to speak in alarm 
 to his conscience. Thou art the man ! 
 
 As this unhappy man may very possibly be 
 a frequenter of our religious assemblies, and 
 even a pretender to personal religion, he is soli- 
 cited, in the name of Jesus Christ, to bring forth 
 something from his store in aid of the good 
 cause. He refuses perhaps ; or, much more 
 probably, just saves the appearance and irksome- 
 ness of formally doing that, by contributing 
 what is immeasurably below all fair proportion 
 to his means ; what is in such disproportion to 
 them that a general standard taken from it 
 would reduce the contributions of very many 
 other persons to the smallest denomination of 
 our money, and would very shortly break up the 
 mechanism of human operation for prosecuting 
 a generous design, throwing it directly on Provi- 
 dence and miracle, with a benediction perhaps 
 uttered by this man, (for he will be as liberal 
 of cant as parsimonious of gold,) on the all- 
 
476 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 sufficiency of that last resource : Yes, God shall 
 have the glory of the salvation of the heathens, 
 while he is happy to have secured the more 
 important point — the saving of his money. 
 
 How much it were to be wished, that the 
 fatuity which this vice inflicts on the faculty 
 which should judge it, (herein bearing one of 
 the most striking characteristics of idolatry,) 
 did not disable the man to take an honest 
 account of the manner in which it has its strong 
 hold on his mind. If, when his eyes and 
 thoughts are fixed on this pelf, regarded as 
 brought into the question of going to promote 
 the worship of God over the earth, or staying to 
 be itself worshipped, he could clearly feel that 
 he detains it from fervent affection to it as an 
 absolute good, he would be smitten with horror 
 to find his soul making such an object its supreme 
 good — for supreme it plainly is when thus pre- 
 ferred to the cause of God, and therefore to God 
 himself. 
 
 But perhaps he thinks his motive regards 
 the prospects of his family. Perhaps he has a 
 favourite or an only son, for whom he destines, 
 with the rest of his treasure, that portion which 
 God is demanding. In due time that son will 
 be put in possession by his father's death, and 
 will be so much the richer for that portion. 
 That this wealth will remain long in his hands, 
 a prosperous and undiminished possession, may 
 not seem very probable when we recollect what 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 477 
 
 has been seen of the heirs of misers. But let us 
 suppose that it will, and suppose, too, that this 
 son will be a man of sensibihty and deep reflec- 
 tion. Then, his property will often remind him 
 of his departed father. And with what emotions ? 
 This, he will say to himself, was my father's god. 
 He did, indeed, think much of me, and of secur- 
 ing for me an advantageous condition in life ; 
 and I ought not to be ungrateful for his cares. 
 He professed also not to be unconcerned for the 
 interests of his own soul, and the cause of the 
 Saviour of the world. But alas ! it presses on 
 me with irresistible evidence, that the love of 
 money had a power in his heart predominant 
 over all other interests. It cannot be effaced 
 from my memory that I have often observed 
 the strong marks of repugnance and impatience, 
 an ingenuity of evasion, an acuteness to dis- 
 cover or invent objections to the matter pro- 
 posed to him, however high its claims, if those 
 claims sought to touch his money, which he 
 contemplated, and guarded, and augmented, 
 with a devotedness of soul quite religious. But 
 whither can a soul be gone that had such a 
 religion ? Would he that acquired, and guarded 
 even against the demands of God, these pos- 
 sessions for me, and who is thinking of them 
 now as certainly as I am thinking of them, oh 
 would he, if he could speak to me while I am 
 pleasing myself that they are mine, tell me that 
 they are the price of my father's soul ? 
 
478 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 If the rich man in either of the parables 
 which exhibit the curse of wealth without bene- 
 volence, (parables being for a moment taken 
 as literal facts), might have been permitted, as 
 one of them petitioned, to send a message to 
 his relations on earth, what might we imagine 
 as the first thing which the anguish of his spirit 
 would have uttered in such a message ? Would 
 it not have been an emphatic expression of 
 the suffering which the wealth he had at once 
 adored and abused inflicted on him now, as if 
 it ministered incessant fuel to those fires? 
 Would he not have breathed out an earnest 
 entreaty that it might not remain in that entire- 
 ness in which it has been his idol ; as if an 
 alleviation might in some way arise from its 
 being in any other state and use than that in 
 which he had sacrificed his soul to it^ Send 
 away some of that accumulation ; give some 
 of it to the cause of God, if he will accept what 
 has been made an abomination by being put in 
 his stead. Send some of it away, if it be but 
 in pity to him of whom you surely cannot help 
 sometimes thinking while you are enjoying it. 
 Can you, in the pleasures and the pride which 
 that wealth may impart, escape the bitter 
 thought, that for every gratification which it 
 administers to you it inflicts a pang on him 
 by whose death it has become yours, and by 
 whose perdition it is so much ? 
 
 How different the reflections of those inhe- 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 479 
 
 ritors, who feel in what they do not po"^sess a 
 dehghtful recognition of the character of their 
 departed relations ; who feel that they possess 
 so much the less than they might have done, 
 because those relations have ahenated to them 
 nothing of what was sacred to God, and to 
 charity ; and who can comprehend and approve 
 the principle of that calculation of their pious 
 predecessors, which accounted it even one of 
 the best provisions for their heirs to dedicate a 
 portion of their property to God. How dif- 
 ferent therefore the feelings of a descendant of 
 such a person as that late most excellent christ- 
 tian and philanthropist of your city, whose name 
 the present topic has probably recalled to the 
 minds of most in this assembly.* 
 
 We cannot be unaware how many well- 
 vdshers to our cause must feel a severe limita- 
 tion put on their means of aiding it by the 
 pressure of the public burdens, those burdens 
 which oppress the energy and the resources of 
 every scheme for doing good. How often does 
 the thought of such designs present itself to a 
 benevolent man, at the moment of his being 
 accosted with the peremptory demands on the 
 public account, and make him look wishfully 
 and regretfully at the sums he is thus surren- 
 dering, to be speedily followed, he knows, by 
 more sums surrendered, from the profits of his 
 
 * Reynolds. 
 
480 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 laborious industry, or the produce of his httle 
 property. How many implements for the holy 
 war, he says to himself, how many bibles, or 
 tracts, or school-manuals, in the languages of 
 Asia, might have sprung from even my share of 
 this forced sacrifice ; but this all-consuming 
 monster, denominated the State, seems to know 
 instinctively whatever good men are devising 
 of gratuitous service to the welfare of their 
 fellow-creatures, and to delight in frustrating 
 their designs, by making spoil of their means, — 
 as if in revenge that they should seem to re- 
 proach the national power by presuming to 
 apply their little individual means to worthier 
 purposes than those on which the grand public 
 resources have been expended without limit. 
 
 We cannot make the odious vision pass away 
 from our view. A great christian state, with 
 every conceivable mode of beneficence offered 
 to its sight and within its powers, has through- 
 out half an age been stimulated to almost mi- 
 raculous exertions, to an expenditure surpassing 
 all the dreams of the golden empires of ro- 
 mance, a consumption of forces and of mate- 
 rials which might seem to have been adequate, 
 under some imaginable forms of application, to 
 give a new character to the moral world; and 
 when, after all this, the christian philanthropist 
 looks to see the condition in which this triumph 
 of its astonishing capabilities has left it, he finds 
 that, excepting some hopeful commencements. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INT>IA. 481 
 
 made quite apart from the public system, 
 and in spite of its insatiable requisitions, that 
 which was to be done remains still to be done, 
 with a frightful addition of evils to the account ; 
 and to be done by the efforts of individuals, 
 and those individuals suffering, from the course 
 of national affairs, a lamentable diminution and 
 alienation of their means. 
 
 In any large assembly, nevertheless, there may 
 be a number of persons who rather approved 
 than condemned, while it continued, that head- 
 long, rampant, and devastating career, of which 
 they would plead the now oppressive conse- 
 quences in excuse for contributing but slightly 
 in aid of a concern like that under our contem- 
 plation. Without making it our business to 
 arraign them for such approval, we may suggest 
 that they should be discreet in using this plea. 
 They should think again before consequences 
 which, as resulting naturally from a certain order 
 of public measures, they were required in reason 
 to foresee, at least to a considerable extent, when 
 they deliberately gave their approbation to those 
 measures, shall be alleged by them in exemption 
 from assisting a better cause than any that has 
 absorbed their subsidies. If they have been the 
 professed servants of that Prince of Peace whose 
 kingdom is not of this world, but nevertheless 
 demands tribute from the worldly resources of 
 its subjects, it must have been their acknowledged 
 primary obligation to look to the advancement 
 
 I I 
 
482 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 of that kingdom ; in practical conformity with that 
 prayer, of which the very first petition is in this 
 reference — unless they could think it enough to 
 say that prayer. This sacred obligation they had 
 to keep in memory, while considering what other 
 expenditures of their property they should take 
 the responsibility of approving : the responsibility, 
 we say ; for to abet and sanction a proceeding is 
 to incur the accountableness as completely as if 
 the manifestation of an opposite opinion would 
 prevent that proceeding; and it were an idle 
 evasion to plead that the course of measures in 
 question would have been pursued, all the same, 
 though disapprobation instead of coincidence had 
 been avowed by these individuals. With this 
 obligation resting on memory and on conscience, 
 they could not, one should think, without alarm 
 for their christian principles, give their sanction 
 to what must inevitably create speedy and large 
 demands on their property, unless they had very 
 solid ground for assurance of being left still com- 
 petent to meet the claims peculiarly authoritative 
 on them as christians. They had to consider 
 then what, in sober calculation, it was probable 
 or possible there should at length be spared to 
 them, by the voracity of such a gulf as they saw 
 swallowing up, year after year, the means of the 
 community. We will presume that they did, as a 
 matter of conscience, seriously consider this ques- 
 tion, and that through the progressive stages of 
 experience they were still satisfied, as remaining 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 483 
 
 constant in the assurance that their approval 
 of the policy which caused such a tremendous 
 consumption, did not involve their consent to an 
 alienation from the cause of Christ of any thing 
 honestly belonging to it. But then we must tell 
 them, that they will now come with a bad grace 
 to say that they have been deceived, and that the 
 cause of Christ must pay the forfeit of their mis- 
 calculation. Surely against the claims of a ser- 
 vice to which their best strength was put under 
 the prior and paramount obligation acknowledged 
 by their profession, they will hesitate to plead 
 that they have been lamed in their willing ad- 
 herence to another, of such widely different 
 character. 
 
 To those who are not liable to this sort of 
 argumenlum ad hominem, while deploring the 
 disability inflicted by the consequences of na- 
 tional conduct, it may be suggested as at once 
 a consolation and incitement, that the most une- 
 quivocal omen of an amendment of the national- 
 condition, even in a temporal respect, is the very 
 circumstance of this recently arisen zeal and acti- 
 vity, in missionary and so many other ways of 
 operation, for extending the prevalence of the 
 true religion in the world. From what has been 
 seen thus far we may affirm, that the Almighty 
 has indicated this as the part of the world whence 
 he is determined to draw, in the outset at least, 
 the chief human means of accomplishing his 
 most glorious designs for its many nations ; that 
 
 1x2 
 
484 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 here he has his mines, and his assembling camp; 
 that here is the part where he the sinews of the 
 sacred war.* But if so, and if that war is to be 
 on so great a scale as appears to be prefigured 
 in the visions of his prophets, may we not ven- 
 ture to say that he will, that he must, protect the 
 stores applicable to his approaching campaigns, 
 from the renewal of such dreadful depredations 
 as we have witnessed, and from the unmitigated 
 continuance of such as are suffered now ? We 
 may assure ourselves that he will in due time 
 warn off the sacrilegious hands of the plunderer. 
 And what a glorious change of the national con- 
 dition, when God shall, as it were, place his angel 
 between what shall remain after all the ravage of 
 ambition war and corruption, and the re-approach 
 of these spoilers. And how gratifying to behold 
 too, in the contrasted operations, the different 
 rate of cost in proportion to the respective re- 
 sults ; to see that, whereas an astonishing and 
 unparalleled expenditure in the vulgar kind of 
 war has resulted in — leaving men, relatively to 
 the objects of that war, not far from where they 
 were, the grand spiritual power, which we behold 
 entering into action, will require an incalculably 
 less amount of material means for its consumption 
 in the whole extent of its operations to transform 
 the moral world. 
 
 * Our American brethren have given worthy pledges of a 
 willingness to make themselves tributaries to the same im- 
 perial cause. 
 
CHRISTIx\NITY IN INDIA. 485 
 
 You will not, my brethren, feel it a damp on 
 the pleasure of anticipating the gradual retreat 
 of the spoiler, that the temporal means so res- 
 cued will still not be held in entire and absolute 
 property by their possessors, but will still be in 
 part under a foreign and authoritative claim. 
 For, besides that it is pleasing to devout minds 
 to hold and regard all things as belonging to 
 God, and as to subserve whatever purpose he 
 pleases, they may be very confident that he 
 will make it to be the better for the community 
 itself, in a temporal respect, whenever there shall 
 prevail in it a disposition to apply its means to 
 promote his cause. Indeed this very spirit will 
 involve a principle of counteraction to all such 
 things as we have seen most miserably destroying 
 the temporal welfare of the nation. 
 
 For the present, while many friends of reli- 
 gion are labouring under the grievous pressure, 
 we may suggest it to them as a consideration 
 not unfit to accompany the exercise of their pru- 
 dence, that the offerings to God from what cala- 
 mity has left have a peculiar value in his esteem, 
 and in the feelings of the sufferer may contribute 
 to exalt adversity into piety. Should we go back 
 in thought to that period of the world when 
 sacrifices, literally, were appointed for the ex- 
 pression of homage to Heaven, we might ima- 
 gine the case of a devout man whose harvests, 
 or plantations, or flocks, had for the greater part 
 perished by some destructive visitation, as by 
 
486 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 tempests, or fire, or locusts, or disease. Let us 
 suppose him, nevertheless, in looking pensively 
 over the desolation, to consider whether yet 
 some small portion of the remainder might not 
 be spared for God, as a token of humble resig- 
 nation to him that gave and had taken away. 
 Would not that probably be the most acceptable 
 sacrifice that had ever burnt on his altar, and 
 offered with the most affecting emotions of reli- 
 gion ? Nor would it seem to him to lessen what 
 was already so little, but rather to augment it in 
 value by bringing a divine benediction upon it. 
 Or suppose a pious man, in that ancient time, to 
 have been cast, by shipwreck, alone, on a desert 
 coast. If his religion, predominant in all scenes 
 and over all feehngs, inspired the wish to make 
 a burnt-offering to his God, his only means might 
 have been something of the little store he had 
 saved from the wreck, and fragments of his ship 
 for fuel. But in the solemnity of bearing toward 
 heaven the expression of a sublime devotion, 
 this would surpass all other sacrificial flames he 
 had ever kindled or beheld. It might appear to 
 his faith, amidst the gloom of the solitary shore, 
 as a symbol of that presence which was in the 
 fire that Moses saw in the desert. 
 
 Perhaps it may be justly thought, that the 
 notions, dispositions, and circumstances, above 
 recounted as adverse to the spirit for chris- 
 tianizing the heathens, and as intercepting thq 
 
CHRISTIANITlf IN INDIA. 487 
 
 desired assistance to a mission actually at work 
 among them, did not require to be commented 
 on at such length. We gladly leave them to 
 become harmless under the progressive ascen- 
 dency of unfettered thinking, experience, bene- 
 volent zeal, and that better aspect which we 
 hope that a good Providence will ere long give 
 to the times, if it were only for the purpose of 
 replenishing the resources of schemes for ex- 
 tending the dominion of divine truth. We shall 
 hasten toward a conclusion by briefly suggesting 
 a few ideas tending to animate the piety of per- 
 sons already inclined in this way to '^come to 
 the help of the Lord." 
 
 And surely there is something very capti- 
 vating in such an expression itself, combined 
 with numerous sentences in the Bible, less bold 
 and striking in phrase, but of the same spirit. 
 It is strange that we are not oftener surprised 
 and delighted at the condescension shewn by 
 the Almighty, in expressing the dictates of his 
 will to his servants in terms and images which 
 permit them to regard the performance of their 
 duty, their mere duty, in the light of cooperation 
 with him. The thought of being authorized by 
 him to entertain so sublime an idea of their 
 vocation, might bear them up in their deepest 
 distresses and most arduous labours ; might 
 animate them though a world were against 
 them. So ennobled a character of their service, 
 however, which it would have been profaneness 
 
488 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 for them to have arrogated without such a sane* 
 tion, is fit to be dwelt upon in its full magnitude 
 only when their minds are the most elevated in 
 devotion, when consequently their humility is the 
 most profound. In the usual ten our of their 
 religious feelings, it should be honour enough to 
 inspire complacency and activity in their work, 
 that they can regard themselves in the humbler 
 capacity of mere instruments ; that the Supreme 
 Agent chooses to effect by means of them what 
 he could accomphsh with infinite facility without 
 them. 
 
 Apply the consideration to the matter now 
 before us. He could by a simple act of his will 
 cause an instantaneous disappearance from the 
 globe of that enormous system of mythological 
 delusion, with all its rites, iniquities, and guardian 
 evil spirits. It might vanish like a vapour of the 
 morning, and leave but its wreck and monument 
 in fallen temples and shivered idols, thenceforth 
 a harmless mass of matter, dispossessed of that 
 property which had breathed poison into men's 
 souls. And indeed, if we were regarding the 
 extermination of that monstrous superstition in 
 no other view than that of the advantage of its 
 being the soonest out of existence, we might be 
 tempted to desire so illustrious a catastrophe. 
 If such a thing might be, a servant of God 
 would be wilUng to forego the honour of his 
 share in the destruction. But when he finds it 
 so evidently a principle in the beneficent designs 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 489 
 
 of the divine administration of the world, that 
 they are not directed solely to the accomplish- 
 ment of one ultimate object, but are intended 
 and adapted to be, in their execution, an em- 
 ployment, a discipline, and an honour, to human 
 agents, he will feel (if his spirit be attempered 
 to the great purposes of his Master) a generous 
 impatience that these agents may be prompt 
 to seize the honour thus brought within their 
 reach. With fire-brands and torches put into 
 their hands, can they be content, he exclaims, 
 to stand still and let them burn out, while the 
 huge fabric inhabited by demon gods, and filled 
 with pestilent abominations, spreads wide and 
 towers aloft in security and defiance before 
 them? Let them advance and prove who has 
 sent them, and whence the fire came that they 
 bear. Let them go and demonstrate upon the 
 proud assemblage of possessors of a region not 
 their own, that the decree of expulsion coming 
 on them at last is not the less armed with 
 authority because He, whose own approach 
 when on earth was always the imperative signal 
 for infernal audacity to retire, seems now only 
 to send his servants to execute his will. That 
 his will should pass into effect through such an 
 agency, may well excite the wonder of those 
 who find such a commission offered to them. 
 It must be the highest distinction which he has 
 to confer on mortals, to be thus, by him, in the 
 sight of far nobler mightier intelligences, ("a 
 
490 
 
 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 spectacle to angels "), accounted worthy to act 
 a part in the grand scheme and process for the 
 enlargement of his kingdom. It will also be a 
 religious triumph as against the principalities 
 and powers of evil, that it should please him to 
 accomphsh his victory by the means, in part, of 
 creatures who, in thus serving their God, should 
 be avenging their race; that these powers should 
 see, that when the irresistible might was at last 
 to be put forth, it was to be through the in- 
 strumentality of beings of that order, in whose 
 debasement and misery they had so long main- 
 tained a direful evidence on the face of the 
 creation that they were not yet consigned to the 
 rigour of their prison-house. 
 
 It is a still further cause of delight, that this 
 putting forth of strength under the external 
 form of weakness, is analogous to the one 
 greatest manifestation of vindicating and re- 
 deeming energy. 
 
 As an incitement to christians to throw a 
 measure of their activity into enterprises aimed 
 at such an object, they may be reminded that, 
 while enjoined to preserve moderation in their 
 own demands upon this earth, they are entitled 
 to be ambitious, shall we not say arrogant, on 
 behalf of their Lord. In their view, the worst 
 usurpation beyond all comparison, in the world, 
 must be that which any where presumes to 
 withhold an inhabited tract from his actual do- 
 minion. On whatever it is that does so presume. 
 
CHRISTIANITV IN INDIA. 491 
 
 let them expend the animosity which might 
 otherwise find its meaner exercise against the 
 boundaries that obstruct their own projects of 
 acquisition. And in this nobler direction it will 
 not be the passion which frets itself against what 
 is immoveable and then subsides or recoils in 
 despair. For they have reason to be assured 
 that those limits against which this more con- 
 secrated ambition is impelled in hostility, will 
 at length be carried away. They can descry 
 through the gross darkness that covers the 
 pagan regions, a mystical signature by the finger 
 of God, on every spot, to indicate its assign- 
 ment by that covenant which has given to the 
 Messiah the heathen for his inheritance, and the 
 uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. 
 That declared decree in heaven, that substance 
 of the thing hoped for, is brought down to the 
 earth in the confident anticipations of the faith- 
 ful, and beheld in foresight as become accom- 
 plished in the actual spectacle of an universal 
 kingdom. 
 
 They see among leading mortals an ardent 
 competition for dominion over spaces of terri- 
 tory, with angry controversy about titles and 
 usurpations, and an incessant resort to the ex- 
 pedient which wastes the contenders and the 
 subject of contention. They loathe and abhor 
 this spectacle of a world with its unnumbered 
 myriads continually made a sport and a prey of 
 the bad passions of those predominant mortals. 
 
492 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 by their power of exasperating and directing 
 the bad propensities of subservient multitudes. 
 The contemplators of the scene, if they beheved 
 it must be always thus, might well be affected 
 with passionate longings for omens of its approach- 
 ing dissolution. An oracle that should tell them, 
 in the plainest meaning of the words, that *' the 
 end of all things is at hand," might delight them 
 more than ever a pagan mover of an ambitious 
 enterprise was elated by voices or signs from the 
 fane of his deity assuring him of conquest. But 
 they have a better consolation in the faith that 
 amidst all these tumults of conflict, amidst all 
 these destructive competitions of transitory po- 
 tentates, there is gradually unfolding itself a 
 cause destined to grow to a dominion which will 
 leave no province or tribe of the earth to be con- 
 tested by the rivalries of an insane ambition. 
 
 In the mean time, if they observe any state 
 making a great progress in power and occu- 
 pancy of the face of the world, it will well 
 become their character to show an animated 
 concern that the kingdom which has their pe- 
 culiar allegiance may be as evidently advancing, 
 and that to this progress that enlargement of 
 the temporal dominion may be made in some 
 way to subserve. And here you will all be 
 reminded of the wonderfully rapid extension of 
 the British acquisitions in Asia, where we cannot 
 help interpreting it as a sign in favour of a 
 higher cause, that a lying spirit should have 
 
CHFllSTIANITY IN INDIA. 493 
 
 betrayed so many pagan and Mahomedan powers 
 to provoke their own destruction. In this view 
 of such vast conquests, we can thank the contriv- 
 ers and the heroes, whose contempt would at any 
 stage of the career have been excited at the notion 
 of its being the real cause of their success that 
 they were preparing the way for Christianity. 
 
 It is of course for men of counsel and of war 
 to scorn this fanatical mode of estimating splen- 
 did conquests. But we can see little on any 
 other ground to console good men for the heavy 
 addition made by conquests so splendid, to those 
 public burdens which leave them such scanty 
 means of doing good, of their own choice and in 
 their own manner. Should national glory be 
 talked of, we could have no fear of making the 
 appeal to every one within hearing, whether he, 
 as an individual of the nation, and one of the 
 owners therefore of the glory of these eastern 
 acquisitions, would not most willingly surrender 
 his share of it on the terms of receiving back, 
 were that possible, so much as it may fairly be 
 calculated to have cost him. Especially this 
 would be a safe appeal to a man who is thinking 
 what a valuable contribution that sum would be 
 to projects for diffusing Christianity through any 
 part of the world. It has not been left him for 
 such disposal. But still, let him hope in Divine 
 Providence that even to that object it has not 
 been altogether lost. And here is a project 
 which seeks to redeem to that very purpose what 
 
494 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 has been taken and expended in a spirit infi- 
 nitely foreign to it, and what, unless so re- 
 deemed, may be truly accounted, for the greater 
 portion of it, lost in the most absolute sense. 
 But this enterprise too is a concern of serious 
 expense. The advocates of this design have no 
 way of avoiding the confession, that it seeks to 
 impose a little more cost for India on persons 
 to whom that country has, independently of their 
 will, cost too much already ; but it is an addition 
 somewhat of the nature of an insurance for Chris- 
 tianity on the ultimate effect of the expenditure. 
 It is, like the prophet's action, casting something 
 into the deep to cause that miraculously to float 
 which were else irrecoverably sunk. 
 
 The object is, that the true religion may 
 advance — too slowly, at first, it is true, but with 
 a continual movement, to be accelerated in 
 Heaven's good time — on the track of our victo- 
 rious armies ; may plant stations on the fields 
 of their encampments and battles ; may demo- 
 lish, in the moral sense, as many strong-holds 
 of superstition as our artillery has reduced for- 
 tresses ; may, in short, carry on operations 
 corresponding to the wars in all the points 
 esteemed the most glorious. And what a de- 
 lightful thing, if thus a Power never thought 
 of by any of the parties in the long conflict, 
 shall come in and take the best of the spoils ; 
 and assume, in a better sense, the dominion 
 which so many potentates have been compelled 
 
CHRISTliVNITY IN INDIA. 4&5 
 
 to resign; showing the one people how they 
 had, in truth, been beguiled through expen- 
 diture and exertion, for an object for which they 
 would have scorned to make, knowingly, a hun- 
 dredth part of such a sacrifice ; and the other, 
 that they had lost their political independence 
 but as a prelude to their deliverance from their 
 tyrant gods. — But how is a design which looks to 
 such consequences to be supported in the early 
 stages of its prosecution ? It is evident there is 
 no way but that in which the friends of religion 
 may, if they will, decline to afford their aid. 
 
 Among the many reasons to be pleaded why 
 they should not so decline, we may suggest the 
 certainty that all the pecuniary aids received by 
 our brethren in India will be faithfully applied, 
 so as to return the best equivalent, in labour 
 and the results of labour, that can be insured by 
 that careful economy of expenditure which has 
 hitherto been one of the most uncontested 
 merits of their proceeding. It is impossible to 
 conceive a stronger pledge for that faithful ap- 
 plication, than the fact of their having many 
 years generously devoted the product of that 
 portion of their own indefatigable labours, which 
 they undertook and have prosecuted for the 
 sole purpose of creating their own means for 
 their christian enterprise. This warfare there- 
 fore, in Hindoostan, is in no danger of incurring 
 a charge which has been constantly and heavily 
 laid on the conduct of our other wars there. 
 
496 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 We may be assured that all the supphes afforded 
 to this service will go into the effective appa- 
 ratus, and will be felt in the enemy's camp. 
 
 While we pay the tribute of our grateful admi- 
 ration to the devotedness, the disinterestedness, 
 and the most extraordinary performances, of the 
 fraternity at Serampore, we cannot help being 
 reminded that the chief of these labourers are 
 advanced in life, and the leader of the band verg- 
 ing fast, in point of age, to the decline. We will 
 not dwell on the irreparable loss which the cause 
 sustained by them with so noble an energy is one 
 day to suffer. But it does seem highly desirable 
 that the remaining portion of the lives of these 
 veterans should be turned to the utmost account. 
 A few spirits so long and severely disciplined, 
 who have mastered so much difficulty, that 
 nothing which can remain appears formidable to 
 them, and who habitually, and now as it were 
 mechanically, labour at the extreme pitch of 
 their labouring power, — and that power inde- 
 finitely increased by practice, — a few such men, 
 and those also acting in concert, are to be esti- 
 mated at many-fold their numerical force, even 
 considered in reference simply to the amount of 
 work they can perform. The valuation, there- 
 fore, of whatever may remain to them of life is 
 to be according to what these acquired powers 
 and habits have added to the ordinary efficiency 
 of industry and abihty. Now, while there is no 
 adding to the length of these invaluable lives, it 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 497 
 
 is possible to make, if we may so express it, an 
 addition to their breadth. That is, it is possible 
 for these men's minds and their system to be 
 carried, by means of larger supplies, into action 
 on a wider extent. And our argument is, that 
 such ampler supplies during their life would be 
 means put in action, over that extent, not to 
 produce an effect merely according to what may 
 be deemed their ordinary rate of operation, but 
 in proportion to the advantage, which is tem- 
 porary and may be short, of being employed by 
 such excellently disciplined agents : such enlarged 
 aid would serve the cause in the magnified pro- 
 portion of these men's peculiar qualification to 
 make them effectual to serve it. 
 
 Nor is it any disparagement, by anticipation, 
 to the zeal and talent which we are confident the 
 Supreme Head of the church will appoint in long 
 succession to this work, when we represent the 
 special importance of aiding it in this particular 
 stage, on the ground that a combination of men 
 uniting the advantage of a patriarchal priority in 
 time, with individual endowments so adapted, 
 such diversified exercise and experience, such 
 difficulty surmounted, and such duration of faith- 
 ful, firm conjunction, can hardly ever be equalled 
 in the power of making the most efficient appli- 
 cation of whatever means shall be supplied. 
 
 The right policy, in this case, is the same as 
 that which would impel a State^ engaged in some 
 ambitious enterprise, to push its military opera- 
 
 K K 
 
498 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 tions most earnestly, and with every practicable 
 reinforcement, during the last campaign in which 
 those operations could probably have the advan- 
 tage of being directed by an unbroken band of 
 veterans trained in conjunction to victory in the 
 service.* 
 
 * It may not be amiss, with respect to persons but slightly 
 acquainted with the missionary portion of the history of our 
 age, to add a few sentences to the mention, in a preceding 
 note, of the three men who formed themselves into a fraternal 
 union at Serampore, between thirty and forty years since. — 
 The rule of their institution was, that as soon as possible 
 (and it was soon actually attained) they should support them- 
 selves, and devote to the christian service all they should gain, 
 beyond what was strictly necessary for that support, by com- 
 bining with their directly missionary employments certain 
 other occupations, literary and connected with literature, as 
 expedients for raising an income. — Not long afterward there 
 were stationed in the same place and neighbourhood other 
 missionaries of the same religious denomination, in a certain 
 degree associated with them, but not of the union in which 
 these three had voluntarily constituted their own independent 
 system, of deliberations, measures, support in common, and 
 mutual accountableness, exclusively of all other authority. 
 
 Within a very few years after the time the references to 
 them were made in this discourse, one excellent member of 
 that union. Ward, was removed by death. The remaining 
 two, one of them now past seventy, and subjected at last to a 
 pressure of bodily infirmity which indicates the approaching 
 conclusion of his labours, the other but few years below that 
 age, both having been remarkably favoured in point of general 
 health during the third part of a century, in a climate so 
 inauspicious to Europeans, have continued to prosecute with 
 unremitting exertion to the present time (1833), with a 
 gradual accession of assistance by the active zeal of younger 
 cooperators, the undertaking to which they so long since 
 devoted themselves for life and death. Their missionary 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 499 
 
 And even as regarding these men themselves, 
 wilHng, Hke St. Paul, to forego, if it might be 
 
 operations have been continually extending to a wider com- 
 pass, though sustained by pecuniary resources far less in pro- 
 portion than the ordinary cost of similar undertakings. But, 
 their own means for creating those resources having been 
 gradually reduced, by various circumstances in that country, 
 almost to nothing, they have now to depend chiefly on such 
 aid as shall be supplied to them from those in this country 
 who cannot be willing that such workmen should be disabled 
 by any thing but death, or that so important a work should 
 fall to the ground in the presence of the idolaters and their 
 gods. — Through good report and evil report they have pro- 
 ceeded on, actuated by the same invariable determination to 
 their great object ; not surprised that they have had to expe- 
 rience, what must be reckoned on by all who surpass their 
 fellow-mortals, in the service especially of Christianity, an 
 ample visitation of malice, misrepresentation, and calumny ; 
 partly from the undisguised enemies of religion, and partly 
 from such as claim to be accounted its friends. But they will 
 stand most worthily and eminently conspicuous in christian 
 history, ages after the calumnies and their authors shall have 
 sunk in oblivion. 
 
 Mere justice to them requires an observation to be here 
 made, on what was said in the discourse in the way of urging 
 a somewhat extra liberality, on the consideration of the too 
 probably short remainder of the lives of men so peculiarly 
 qualified to apply the contributed assistance to the best ad- 
 vantage. The writer, (or discourser), never having had the 
 least curiosity to inquire into the ofiicial affairs of societies or 
 committees, was really not aware that no part of what was 
 contributed, then or long before, to the general missionary 
 purposes, went in aid of the Serampore fraternity ; who sought 
 no such assistance, but, during a very long period, more, 
 probably, than twenty years, supported and extended their 
 system on the sole strength of their own exertions and means; 
 and were disinterested enough to be willing that this fact 
 should be very little known, while their great reputation was 
 availing so powerfully to obtain from public liberality supplies 
 
 kk2 
 
500 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 put at their choice, a more speedy emancipation 
 from their toils to the final rest, and to labour on 
 to the last period of exhausted nature, — it seems 
 due from our sympathy and gratitude to wish 
 that, if death should not deny them the time, 
 the christian public should not refuse them the 
 other means, for advancing the introductory 
 process of the great work to a point where they 
 would be perfectly willing to bid it adieu. That 
 supposed limit of their christian ambition is not 
 
 which went to missionary uses entirely distinct from their 
 operations. — In the long course of those operations they have 
 expended, for purely christian and philanthropic purposes, 
 from the proceeds of their own various industry in ways 
 secondary and subsidiary to their extensive gratuitous labours 
 in missionary and bible-translation work, an amount which 
 would have made them all rich ; but which, in their honour- 
 able poverty, they are rejoicing to have so expended. — By the 
 loss, in the recent dreadful commercial crash at Calcutta, of 
 what small funds they possessed appropriate to the service, 
 they are at present reduced to a situation of extreme difficulty 
 for the means of continuing the support, on even the most 
 restrictive plan of economy, of the missionaries whom they 
 have placed at no less than eighteen different stations on the 
 immense territory under the British government or influence. 
 They have transmitted a plain statement of this situation, with 
 an appeal to the liberality of the friends of religion in this 
 country. 
 
 During a very long period they held an ostensible con- 
 nexion, without dependence or accountableness on their part, 
 with the Baptist Missionary Society ; and, when toward the 
 end of that period their resources had become greatly dimi- 
 nished, received pecuniary aid, for a few years, from that 
 Society. But about seven years since the connexion entirely 
 ceased ; and from that time all assistance requested for them 
 is expressly in their name as the Serampore Missionaries. 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 501 
 
 altogether an imaginary one : not a chariot like 
 Elijah's for their departure would inspire in them 
 such joy, in quitting the world, as to know that 
 the most important parts of the revelation of 
 God had been brought to speak in every con- 
 siderable language of Asia. 
 
 But at all events, they will depart with the 
 delight of knowing, that their distinguished lot 
 on earth has been to open the way, in an im- 
 portant sense, to the region whither they are 
 going, for innumerable souls escaping from the 
 kingdom of darkness in succession of time to 
 follow them ; while they will rejoice to have 
 staid long enough to see the evinced and com- 
 pleted efficacy of their appointment as evangehsts 
 in some that are gone before them. They will 
 know that by the cause in which they have lived 
 and laboured, and are dying, a new mode of the 
 divine attention, a greater measure of the divine 
 interest, has been drawn and must remain fixed 
 in benignant radiance on a formerly estranged 
 and desolate tract of the world ; inasmuch as 
 wherever there are faithful witnesses to the 
 truth, repenting sinners, and pagans making 
 sacrifices of the idols to which they had offered 
 sacrifice, and commencing in the name of Christ 
 a new life, amidst prayers and praises in languages 
 which never addressed the Almighty before, there 
 is (speaking reverently) something to necessitate 
 toward that spot a far more special emanation of 
 favour and providence from heaven, than when 
 
602 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 that moral waste contained nothing spiritually 
 related to God. If there were but one particle 
 there of such new and sacred existence, heaven 
 must continue in communication with the spot 
 where there is something so much its own, till it 
 became extinct, or were resumed to the sky. 
 How happy then if there shall be there an aug- 
 mentation, every day, of what thus bears a special 
 relation to God, to become a continually stronger 
 attraction of the divine benignity thitherward; 
 till at length the language of prophecy shall be 
 fulfilled, '' Behold, the tabernacle of God is with 
 men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall 
 be his people, and God himself shall be with 
 them, and be their God." 
 
 In a confidence of a progressive prevalence of 
 the gracious dispensation of which we think we 
 see the commencement, it might be permitted 
 to indulge for a moment in the contemplation of 
 India as in a future age, in which distant period 
 we can in a measure conceive what will be the 
 reflections of a devout observer, regarding the 
 scene in reference to the past. With the picture 
 on his imagination of India as the missionaries 
 had found it, and as many preserved authentic 
 descriptions will agree with them in representing 
 it, he may look over the ample region, to wonder 
 what is become of that direful element, which 
 was once perceived pervading and corrupting 
 the whole wide diffusion of mental and moral 
 existence ; betraying in a darkness visible the 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 503 
 
 character of the people's souls through their less 
 sable exterior. The dusky visages, the attire 
 and the structure of habitations perhaps, and the 
 grand features of Nature, will be seen the same ; 
 but a horrid something, composed of lies, and 
 crimes, and curses, and woes, that did rest in 
 deadly possession over all the land, will be 
 broken up and gone. Where has a place been 
 found for what occupied for ages after ages so 
 many cities, and villages, and houses, and minds? 
 What tempest has driven it away ? What pre- 
 sence has been here which that presence could 
 not abide ? Was it that Spirit in awe of which 
 eternal night vanished at the creation of the 
 world ? 
 
 He may look from the southern and western 
 shores toward the sublime mountain-boundary 
 of the region on the north, and reflect what a 
 scene it was to confront heaven, in all this 
 breadth, with deities and worships, institutes, 
 dogmas, and licensed morals, Jiostile and hateful 
 to God ; each individual of unnumbered millions 
 being infatuated with notions, and perverted to 
 habits, which exemplified to what depth a ra- 
 tional nature could fall. But how glorious for 
 that reflecting observer to feel it verified to him 
 that this is but a vision of the past, and that, de- 
 parting like a dream when one awakes, it leaves 
 him in view of a bright and blessed reality. 
 How he will exult in the palpable evidence that 
 the Son of God has spread his dominion 
 
504 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 from those shores to those mountains ; that the 
 oracles of truth have taken place of the most 
 silly, and loathsome, and monstrous legends with 
 which the father of lies ever made contemptuous 
 sport of the folly of his dupes ; and that the new 
 religion admitted in faith as doctrine, has evinced 
 its moral excellence in the virtues of its believers. 
 When joining with them in exercises of worship 
 to the true God, he may have short lapses of 
 mind into a view of the past, presented in vivid 
 images of the fantastic fooleries, and the detest- 
 able orgies, that had once elated superstition to 
 madness on the very same spot, as attested by 
 some monumental ruin of a temple ; and he will 
 recover from such brief alienation of thought to 
 verify the fact, that he actually is among persons 
 reverently calling on God in the name of Christ. 
 That disease of the soul will be gone that ex- 
 hibits itself in alternate lethargy and raving. 
 The charities of humanity, restored among them, 
 will show why it was that their ancestors could 
 look upon, or even cause, the death of relations 
 and friends with stockish indifference. And 
 finally, he will see the effect of that which mis- 
 sionaries are seeking to promote among them, in 
 the manner in which the death of christianized 
 Hindoos will differ from that insensate quiet, 
 that stoicism without magnanimity, with which 
 the pagan Hindoo submits to fate. 
 
 And if we might, for a moment, entertain so 
 improbable an idea, as that this observer and 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 505 
 
 comparer should be uninformed of the general 
 course of means and operation, through which 
 the Almighty Spirit had accomplished this great 
 change, we can suppose his conjectures on the 
 subject to be much too magnificent. How came 
 thousands of temples to be surrendered to the 
 decay of time or the shorter work of dilapidation, 
 an infinity of idols to be demohshed, a mytho- 
 logy and ritual, involving the whole life and 
 being of the human multitude, to be exploded, 
 the powers of Brahmins and priests to be anni- 
 hilated, a whole intellectual and moral system to 
 be supplanted by its opposite ? Might not such 
 questions put his mind on the effort to imagine 
 the most extraordinary modes of divine inter- 
 position ? He might fancy, perhaps, that some 
 great convulsion of nature had contributed to 
 the overthrow of so many structures forming the 
 glory and the fortresses of superstition ; that 
 portentous phenomena, bearing a menacing as- 
 pect on the pagan rites, had been displayed in 
 the heavens ; or that a new dispensation of 
 miracles, at once verifying the record of the 
 ancient ones and surpassing them in magnifi- 
 cence, had expelled the fabulous monsters of 
 the popular faith, as our Lord sent the demon- 
 ized herd into the sea, and had brought the 
 truth with the force of irresistible facts. Might 
 there not also have been an eminently peculiar 
 manifestation of providence for the temporal 
 welfare of the converts, marking them out to 
 
506 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 the gross apprehension of the idolaters as 
 exclusively the favourites of the Power that 
 governs the world. And might he surmise in 
 addition, that the foreign christian state, which 
 had conquered Hindoostan, must have system- 
 atically lent, during the acquisition and posses- 
 sion, its whole influence arising from conquest 
 and dominion, to promote Christianity by every 
 expedient short of force ? 
 
 No, he might be told, you see, in this happy 
 transformation nothing which is to be referred 
 to any such causes. The work began in some 
 of the humblest movements that ever pointed 
 to a great object, movements in which the 
 actors owed in part their toleration to the con- 
 tempt felt for them by the people they adven- 
 tured among. A train of ideas had been excited 
 in the minds of some individuals respecting the 
 prophecies relative to the heathen nations. 
 Their conversations about these with their re- 
 ligious friends, had led to meetings, prayers, 
 little arrangements of co-operation, and slender 
 contributions of money. A gradual extension 
 of these measures had resulted in the sending 
 of several zealous men, by means of conveyance 
 marked with the disfavour of the governing 
 authorities, to begin the experiment. It was 
 commenced under appearances very far from 
 resembling Constantine's pretended vision of a 
 cross in the clouds, inscribed as the sign of 
 victory ; or from recalling to mind what is said 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. ' 507 
 
 of pagan priests of other ages having been af- 
 frighted by a trembling of their fanes, and fearful 
 voices from their recesses announcing the aban- 
 donment of the solemn abode by the deities. 
 Had these servants of Christ taken up their 
 design on any condition of the intervention of 
 preternatural omens, or any presumption of a 
 sudden revolutionary efficacy of their humble 
 and ordinary instrumentality, the only dictate 
 of their experience hitherto would have been to 
 lay it down. But, wild as they were accounted, 
 both the promoters in England, and the agents 
 in the East, they had not been such elated 
 visionaries in their expectations as that a less 
 than moderate success thus far should deject 
 them to a surrender of the resolution to per- 
 severe, and to enjoin on their successors an 
 interminable perseverance, in the trial of what 
 the Almighty should see fit to accomplish at 
 length by means of the divine revelation sent 
 into every region, a never tired repetition of 
 missionary journeys, addresses, and friendly con- 
 ferences, with the co-operation of schools and 
 progressive knowledge, and an infinite diffusion 
 of printed religious instructions ; and all re- 
 commended by the virtue and unequivocally 
 manifest benevolence of the christian reformers. 
 This system of plain expedients, (it may be sup- 
 posed to be said to the future wonderer at the 
 transformation,) these operations so little par- 
 taking of the marvellous, so httle inflamed with 
 
508 ON THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 fanaticism, went on with a never-ceasing ac- 
 tivity, and with continually multiplying means 
 and accession of hands, after those who had 
 commenced them and those who had followed 
 next had sunk, one after another, in the dust. On 
 their tombs, (both those fresh in date and colour 
 and those mouldering with age) their successors 
 devoted themselves to prosecute the same de- 
 sign. Converts from heathenism, in numbers 
 but small for awhile, but each year more, and 
 at length amounting to a decimation, were 
 brought in as captives, but to go out under 
 the oath of hostility against that of which they 
 and their ancestors had been the slaves. The 
 succeeding generation of the christians of the 
 west, were happy to continue from that quarter 
 their alliance and aid in the mightier progress of 
 a cause, which their ancestors had set on foot 
 in so diminutive a form, committing in faith and 
 hope its success to God. The influence of that 
 Sovereign Spirit has descended in a progressive 
 increase of efficacy far more than proportioned 
 to the enlargement of the system of means : and 
 so it has come to pass, (it might be said to the 
 future admirer,) that you can exult in the dis- 
 appearance from the world of one mighty power 
 of evil that once stretched the shadow of death 
 over all your regions. 
 
 For us, and our period of time, there is not 
 only this one grand domination of moral evil, 
 standing in hideous tyranny over a large portion 
 
CHIIISTIANITV IN INDIA. 509 
 
 of our world ; in many forms, of more imme- 
 diate invasion of ourselves, that worst enemy 
 maintains a powerful and dreadful presence. 
 We require to be kept in a habitual and alarm- 
 ing sense of the fact, that the one thing in the 
 creation which surpasses all others as an object 
 for hatred, is here amidst us, and all around, in 
 many diversities of malignant existence ; and 
 with all of them it is our vocation to be at 
 enmity and war. It were in vain to seek to 
 escape from the condition of our place in the 
 dominions of God. A mind of wandering and 
 melancholy thought, impatient of the grievous 
 realities of our state, may at some moments almost 
 breathe the wish that we had been a different 
 order of beings, in another dwelling place than 
 this, and appointed on a different service to the 
 Almighty. In vain ! Here still we are, to pass 
 the first part of our existence in a world where 
 it is imposible to be at peace, because there has 
 come into it a mortal enemy to all that live in 
 it. Darkness and silence over the universe 
 deny us all knowledge of the inhabitants of its 
 innumerable worlds ; but we would willingly 
 believe that this may be the only region (except 
 that of penal justice) where the cause of evil is 
 permitted to maintain a contest. Here perhaps 
 may be almost its last encampment, where its 
 prolonged power of hostility may be suffered in 
 order to give a protracted display of the manner 
 of its appointed destruction. Here our lot is 
 
510 ON THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cast, on a ground so awfully preoccupied ; a 
 calamitous distinction ! but yet a sublime one, if 
 thus we may render to the Eternal King a ser- 
 vice of a more arduous kind than it is possible 
 to the inhabitants of any other world than this 
 to render him ; and if thus we may be trained, 
 through devotion and conformity to the Celes- 
 tial Chief in this warfare, to the final attainment 
 of what he has promised, in so many illustrious 
 forms, to him that overcometh. We shall soon 
 leave the region where so much is in rebelhon 
 against our God. But we shall go where all 
 that pass from our world must present them- 
 selves as from battle, or be denied to mingle 
 in the eternal joys and triumphs of the con- 
 querors. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CLAV, PRINTER, BREAD-STREET-HILL. 
 
^IVERsixy OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Return todeskfr„„..hich Wowed. 
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 
 date stamped below. 
 
 /6Mar'51WiC 
 7Ja'53RCN -. 
 
 t)EC 
 
 15 
 
 ICLF (N) 
 
 ^eC'O LD 
 
 ''''''mi3^e5-5 
 
 PM 
 
 ..^S>^ NOV 1 8 1965 6 
 ^ ' REC'D 
 
 .t^o\5550S fOI/l9.65-8AM 
 
 LOAM DEPT. 
 ^EC'D LDJ 
 
 FEB2i 
 
 1958, 
 
 LD2I-100^n,.49(B7uLl6, 
 
 476 
 
^^^am^. 
 
 S'S" 
 
 ^■^V."i-^>