Chap. VII.] IMMORAL INFLUENCE OF SKEPTICISM.

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insignificant. The characteristic difference is lost between himand the brute creation, from which he is no longer distinguished,except by the vividness and multiplicity of his perceptions.

If we reflect on that part of our nature which disposes us tohumanity, we shall find, that, where we have no particular attach-ment, our sympathy with the sufferings, and concern for the de-struction, of sensitive beings, are in proportion to their supposedimportance in the general scale ; or, in other terms, to theircapacity for intelligence and enjoyment. We feel, for example,vastly more at witnessing the destruction of a man, than of aninferior animal, because we consider it as involving the extinctionof a vastly greater sum of intelligence and happiness. For thesame reason, he who would shudder at the slaughter of a largeanimal, will see, without a pang, a thousand insects perish. Oursympathy with the calamities of our fellow-creatures is adjusted bythe same measure. We feel more powerfully affected with the dis-tresses of fallen greatness than with equal or greater distresses suf-fered by persons of inferior rank ; because, having been accustom-ed to associate with an elevated station the idea of superior happi-ness, the loss appears to us the greater, and the wreck the moreextensive. But the disproportion in importance between manand the meanest insect is not so great, as that which subsists be-tween man considered as mortal , and as immortal; that is, betweenman as he is represented by the system of skepticism, and bythat of Divine revelation ; for the enjoyment of the meanest insectbears some proportion, though a very small one, to the presenthappiness of man ; but the happiness of time bears none at allto that of eternity. The skeptical system, therefore, sinks theimportance of human existence to an inconceivable degree.

From these principles results the following important practicalinference, — that to extinguish human life by the hand of violencemust be quite a different thing in the eyes of a skeptic, from whatit is in those of a Christian. With the skeptic, it is nothingmore than diminishing by one the many millions of fugitive andcontemptible creatures, which exist on the earth. The Christiansees, in the same event, an accountable being cut off from a stateof probation, and hurried, perhaps unprepared, into the presenceof his Judge, to hear that final, that irrevocable sentence, which57