We deserve it now more than ever. Never, it is true, has the condition of man been more equal or better. But the desires of men have far outrun their progress. Never was ambition more impatient and widespread. Never were so many hearts a prey to the thirst for wealth and pleasure. Pleasures refined and grovelling, a thirst of material well-being and of intellectual variety, a spirit of activity and luxury, of adventure and idleness: everything appears possible, desirable, and accessible to all. It is not that passion is strong, or that man is disposed to take much trouble for the gratification of his desires. {54} He wishes feebly, desires immoderately; and the great scope of his desire throws him into a state of uneasiness, in which all that he already possesses appears but as the drop of water forgotten as soon as swallowed, and which irritates thirst instead of quenching it. The world has never seen such a conflict of imperfect desires, fancies, pretensions, exactions; never heard such a clamour of voices demanding together as their right all they have not and all that pleases them. And these voices are not raised to God. Ambition, is at once extended and debased. When the teachers of the people were religious preceptors, they tried to detach the popular thought from the things of earth, and by raising desires and hopes to heaven, to restrain and calm them here. They knew that here, do what they might, satisfaction was impossible. The popular teachers of this day think otherwise and speak another language. In the presence of the hard lot and burning ambition of man, at the very time that they are displaying their misery and fomenting their desires, they are telling them that this earth contains what will satisfy them; and that if each be not as happy as he would be, it is not in the nature of things nor of his own nature that he should complain, but of the vices of society, and the usurpations of a certain class of men. All are placed in this world to be happy; all have the same right to happiness; the world can afford happiness to all. Words like these resound daily in the ears of all, knock at the portals of every heart, penetrate by every crevice into the most remote folds of society. {55} And then we are astonished at the deep agitation and uneasiness under which nations and individuals, states and souls are labouring! For myself, I wonder the uneasiness is not greater, the agitation more violent, the explosion more sudden. Such ideas and such words are enough to set humanity astray and rouse it to revolt. And the preserving care of Providence, the innate and spontaneous wisdom which men cannot absolutely shake off, must be powerful to prevent such language--unceasingly repeated and universally heard--from plunging the world again into chaos.