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Nothing is more commonly known, than that those, who are born blind, cannot form the smallest notion of colours, and of light; it is impossible, however, they should hear the pleasures, derivable from sight, so frequently spoken of by others, without comparing them with other sources of gratification, with which they happen to be acquainted; it is an affecting, and interesting circumstance in the annals of one* who had himself been blind from his infancy, that the similitude he was always apt to frame for the unknown pleasures of sight, were the pleasures of virtue, and religion, to his pious and ardent imagination; the landscape of the evening was like the close of a well-spent life; friendship, and pity were the full stream, and the green pasture; the gospel was the day spring from on high.

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There is a pleasure in the sight of the human countenance, greater than any derived from the contemplation of those objects to which we bear a cold, and a distant relation; it is pleasant to the heart of man, to

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* Dr. Blacklock.

be met with looks of kindness and regard; to see a countenance that promises support in the evil day, that reminds us of ancient attachments, and family love; that carries the awful signs of those feelings, and passions, which must influence our future fate. Which of you, that expects to see a long absent brother, or a child returning from the perils of war, and of distant lands; which of you would forego the pleasure of tracing every lineament of his face, and reading on his features the language of deep, and ardent affection? Ask of these unhappy children, what they would sacrifice, that they might see, where it only for an instant, the mother that nursed them; the guide that led them out; the brother that has treated them kindly, and gently, in their infant days? But brother, and parent, and guide, and friend, are one to them; they know not the signs of nature, the looks of mercy, and the smiles of love.

Another source of misery to the blind, is their defenceless weakness of body; they can neither foresee evil, ascertain its nature, nor avert its consequences, If they venture

a step from their usual haunts, every spot on which they tread is pregnant with some new danger;-the earth seems to them a continued precipice.-The blind, says a very excellent writer, who had, himself, never enjoyed the blessing of sight; the blind, not only may be, but actually are, during a considerable period, apprehensive of danger in every motion, towards] any place from whence their contracted powers of perception give them no intelligence. All the various modes of delicate proportion; all the beautiful varieties of lights and colours; whether exhibited in the works of nature, or of art; are to them irretriev ably lost; dependant for every thing, except mere subsistence, on the good offices of others; obnoxious to injury from every point, which they are neither capacitated to receive, nor qualified to resist, they are, during the present state of being, rather prisoners at large, than citizens of nature.

To estimate the advantages of sight, or of any other blessing coeval with life, we should call in the force of contrast, and consider what the condition of man would

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have been, had it pleased God to create him without it. Devoid of sight, man would acquire his knowledge of the properties of bodies, slowly, singly, and with extreme uncertainty ;-the sluggish current of his ideas would render hini unfit for enterprize, his submission to every danger passive, or his opposition fruitless, and confused ; some faint intelligence he would derive from sound; but he could receive few accurate notions from any greater distance than he could reach. From all that knowledge of bodies which we derive from an acquaintance with their affinities to light; and which, to us, are the signs of vigour and decay, salubrity, and harm; youth and age; hatred and love; he would be eternally precluded; his mind must necessarily be exercised upon diminutive objects; because, though a long continued series of touches would give him an accurate notion of each part touched, he could not, from such disconnected intelligence, collect the notion of a single individual mass. The works of God thus broken into baubles, and given to him bit by bit, what can this truncated; mutilated being know of the wisdom and

power of his Creator ?-Open to him now the visible world; he penetrates into distant space; he sees, at one glance, millions of objects;-he views the breadth, and depth, and altitude of things;-he perceives, there is a God among the aged streams; and the perpetual mountains, and the everlasting hills.

My brethren, as no other topic, worthy of your attention, presses upon me, I conclude, with recommending most earnestly, these distressed objects to your notice; and I remind you how merciful our blessed Saviour was wont to shew himself to their afflictions. Blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side begging; and, as the crowd passed by, he cried, with a loud voice, "Thou son of David have mercy on me." Jesus stopped the multitude; and, before them all, restored him to his sight. The first thing that he saw, who never saw before, was the Son of God. These blind persons, like Bartimeus, will never see, till they behold their Redeemer on the last day; not as he then was, in his earthly shape, but girded by all the host of heaven;-the judge of nations;

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