Sermons By the Late Rev Charles Jenkins

that character is contemplated solely in reference to the low and varying standard of moral virtue which exclusively prevails, where the lofty and immutable requisitions of a spiritual religion are neither recognized nor felt. To these discoveries are chiefly owing the most painful disappointments, with which the life of man abounds. They who are just starting in their earthly course, are incessantly met with disclosures of selfishness, duplicity, and cold indifference, where their glowing anticipation had represented to them only a disinterested, ingenuous, and fervent friendship. And it would be difficult to find an individual, that has nearly measured the ordinary limits of human life, however he may be accustomed to speculate on the abstract question relative to the nature and degree of human depravity, who would hesitate to admit, that his long experience has been, not with the virtues, but with the evils of the heart of man. And if we view our species in the light of those penal enactments, which have ever beenmultiplying in all civilized communities, to meet the fresh developements of moral depravation in crimes of new and diversi6ed forms, we shall be constrained to admit, that we gain little new knowledge of human nature, that is not occupied with its vitiated qualities. But the progress of our knowledge by such means, is necessarily slow, and can never lead to any thing like a full discovery of the deep and universal corruption of the natural heart....