372
AN ESSAY ON THE
CHAP. XIX.
The sorrows of life necessary to soften and humanize the heart.—The excitements of social sympathy often produce characters of a higher order than the mere possessors of talents.—Moral evil probably necessary to the production of moral excellence.—Excitements from intellectual wants continually kept up by the infinite variety of nature, and the obscurity that involves metaphysical subjects.—The difficulties in Revelation to be accounted for upon this principle.—The degree of evidence which the scriptures contain, probably, best suited to the improvements of the human faculties, and the moral amelioration of mankind.—The idea that mind is created by excitements, seems to account for the existence of natural and moral evil.
The sorrows and distresses of life form another class of excitements, which seem to be necessary, by a peculiar train of impressions, to soften and humanize the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate all the Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertion of benevolence. The general tendency
of
