03.0008. Vol 01 - GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS The difference of mental improvement among men seems very much to depend on their capacity and habit of gathering instruction from the objects which are continually presented to their observation. Two men behold the same fact: one of them is in the habit of drawing such remarks and inferences as the fact affords, and learns somewhat from every thing he sees; while the other sees the same fact, and perhaps with a momentary admiration, but lets it pass without making so much as one profitable reflection on the occasion. The excursions of the bee and the butterfly present an exact emblem of these two characters.

I have present to my mind an acquaintance, who has seen more of the outside of the world than most men: he has lived in most countries of the civilized world; yet I scarcely know a man of a less improved mind: with every external advantage, he has learned nothing to any useful purpose: he seems to have passed from flower to flower without extracting a drop of honey; and, now, he tires all his friends with the frivolous garrulity of a capricious, vacant, and petulant old age.

I wish the reader of these Memoirs may avoid such an error in passing over the history here laid before him. An extraordinary train of facts is presented to his observation; and if "The proper study of mankind is man,” the history before us will surely furnish important matter of the kind to the eye of every wise, moral traveler.

I would here call the attention of three classes of men to a single point of prime importance; namely, the EFFICACY AND EXCELLENCY OF REAL CHRISTIANITY, as exhibited in the principles and practice of the subject of these Memoirs.