Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/244

238 The humble mind that eeketh to find favour in His ight, and calmly examines its conduct when only His preence is felt, will eldom form a very erroneous opinion of its own virtues. During the till hour of elf-collection the angry brow of offended jutice will be fearfully deprecated, or the tie which draws man to the Deity will be recognized in the pure entiment of reverential adoration, that wells the heart without exciting any tumultuous emotions. In thee olemn moments man dicovers the germ of thoe vices, which like the Java tree hed a petiferous vapour around—death is in the hade! and he perceives them without abhorrence, becaue he feels himelf drawn by ome cord of love to all his fellow-creatures, for whoe follies he is anxious to find every extenuation in their nature—in himelf. If I, he may thus argue, who exercie my own mind, and have been refined by tribulation, find the erpent's egg in ome fold of my heart, and cruh it with difficulty, hall not I pity thoe who have tamped with les vigour, or who have heedlesly nurtured the inidious reptile till it poioned the vital tream it ucked? Can I, concious of my ecret ins, throw off my fellow-creatures, and calmly ee them drop into the cham of perdition, that yawns to receive them.—No! no! The agonized heart will cry with uffocating impatience—I too am a man! and have vices, hid, perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the dut before God, and loudly tell me, when all is mute, that we are formed of the ame earth, and breathe the ame element. Humanity thus ries naturally out of humility, and twits the cords of love&ensp;