How true the observation that the most helpless of all creatures is man, born of a woman, who cometh forth like the tender bud of a delicate and fading flower.
The ever-living soul embarks on the vast ocean of life, in so frail and delicate a tenement, that there is no semblance of strength to resist the angry waves that continually dash against the tempest-tossed and quivering fabric.
But it outrides the storm of three score years and ten, until it is engulfed in the maelstrom and eddying circles of the river of Death. How vast, how exquisite are the sensibilities of man, whose first emotions of pleasure and pain, are the alphabet of humanity.
The pleasure felt by a sentient being, creates the first ideas of good, while on the other hand the sensation of pain is synonymous with evil. As we awake into existence, each passing moment seems to develop new desires; our grasping souls and bodily wants are constantly re-echoing each other’s cravings; unsatisfied human nature is ever on the alert, crying, give, give. This restless search for good, pleasure, or happiness, leads its victims astray, and thus is created the preponderance of evil; for such hot and eager haste stays not to discriminate. The fatal apple seemed so good and so much to be desired to the mother of all living, that she took, and ate; but when she had eaten her eyes were opened. Thus by such efforts to secure the good, the limit is overstepped, and suffering and sorrow entailed. Still, none enjoy, and none suffer in the same degree; innumerable have been the specimens of nature’s handiwork, yet never were any two individuals alike in their natural or intellectual structure.
There is a wonderful connection between the physical and the moral in our curious composition; and the latter is so much modified by the former, that the variety of temperaments and dispositions may be attributed to the reciprocal influences of these two constituents of our being. The origin of good and evil is then embodied in our own hearts, in the structure of the human frame, in our natural susceptibilities to pleasure and pain.
The individuality of pleasure and pain creates an approving and disapproving principle in every human frame, and each man is pleased with himself, when he enjoys a personal benefit from good or pleasure, and displeased when he suffers from the consequences of pain or evil. The lesson is soon learned that the evil might have been avoided, and conscience raises her silent testimony in the bosom. Apart from our own sensations, there seems to be a superstitious principle innate in the human breast, a deference to a supreme good, which as the Ruler and Creator of the universe, holds all created things in awe, and to whom the conscience or self-approving and self-condemning principle pays all deference.
This principle has existed under every form of humanity, in every variety of nation and blood, and has been educated, and developed by different circumstances.
Thus are derived all religions, and the fear of retribution for transgressing the bounds which conscience claims for the real good, and its essence the supreme Creator, has led men to various acts of atonement or self-recommendation.
The mind of man instinctively looked from “Nature up to Nature’s God,” and sought an embodiment for the Divine essence, as there was for the human.
The earliest semblance of Divinity was displayed in the sun, moon, and stars. The glorious orb of day, the great source of light and heat, the vivifier of all creation, whose genial rays warming the bosom of the mother earth, caused the tender grass to spring forth, and every herb yielding fruit, to give its increase for the sustenance of animal life, the great luminary of the vast universe, so beautiful to gaze upon, and so powerful in its sway over the world alotted to man for a dwelling-place, seemed as if placed in the heavens for the especial adoration of all created things.