Page:Omniana 2.djvu/14

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4
OMNIANA.

misfortunes, it frequently precludes it, and induces effeminate and cowardly selfishness. Our own sorrows, like the princes of Hell in Milton's Pandaemonium, sit enthroned "bulky and vast:" while the miseries of our fellow-creatures dwindle into pigmy forms, and are crowded, an innumerable multitude! into some dark corner of the heart. There is one criterion, by which we may always distinguish benevolence from mere sensibility. Benevolence impels to action, and is accompanied by self-denial."


172. Text Sparring.

When I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage coach without the probability of hearing!) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected sentence of half a dozen words from any part of the old or new testament, and resting on the literal sense of these words the eternal misery of all who re-