But the great difficulty with which this system has to contend, is, the absolute impossibility of finding proper persons to carry it into effect. The life and soul of it is unmingled mercy, and men, qualified by gentleness of temper and benevolence of heart, to administer its laws, are not to be found on earth. Man, in his ruined and fallen nature, is a savage, and the milk of human tenderness was never drawn from the breast of a tiger. To give a full practical demonstration of the tendency and effects of the Penitentiary discipline, as it exists in the speculations of the philanthropist, _God_ must become the _director_, and _angels_ the ministering spirits of its administration. Such a system, in the faultlessness of perfection, is now in practical operation on the entire community of fallen and impenitent spirits; and the success of the past demonstrates the rationality of the expectation of universal success. On this the mind rests with perfect pleasure, and is relieved by it from the painfulness of witnessing the inefficiency of human means, to reform the votaries of guilt. There can be no moral truth more fully demonstrated than this, that nothing but _goodness_ can beget goodness. Material substances communicate their own properties to each other, and moral qualities impregnate, with their own nature, the objects on which they exert an influence.--Hence the baleful influence of tyranny on the human mind. Hence the contagion of vice. And hence the reason of the truth, that "we love God because he first loved us." Where, in all history, can an instance be found of a single reformation from guilt, by any other than gentle and clement means? The blaze of retributive vengeance may awe the propensities to crime into inaction; but it cannot uproot them. The _terrors_ of the Lord may make men afraid, but it is the _goodness_ of God that leads to reformation. This is the secret of the Lord, which is with them that fear him. This is the golden key which opens the cause of that success, which has, _visibly_, in so many cases, marked the progress of the gospel of the _grace_ of God; and which is, in all others, attaining the same happy result, by a process so _silent_ and _slow_, as to evade the careless observation of the unreflecting multitude. This is the philosophy of the divine administration, and it is one of those simple sciences which the pride of man is reluctant to learn; but which the humility of Christ will dispose him to receive, and by which his nature is to be renewed and adorned.