They feel
that they have a sinful nature which keeps their will and reason in
slavery, and makes sin a hard bondage, a miserable prison-house, from
which they cannot escape. In short, they feel and know that they are
fallen. Small comfort, too, to every thinking man, who looks upon
the great nations of savages, which have lived, and live still, upon
God's earth, and sees how, so far from being able to do right if they
choose, they go on from father to son, generation after generation,
doing wrong, more and more, whether they like or not; how they become
more and more children of wrath, given up to fierce wars, and cruel
revenge, and violent passions, all their thought, and talk, and
study, being to kill and to fight; how they become more and more
children of darkness, forgetting more and more the laws of right and
wrong, becoming stupid and ignorant, until they lose the very
knowledge of how to provide themselves with houses, clothes, fire, or
even to till the ground, and end in feeding on roots and garbage,
like the beasts which perish. And how, too, long before they fall
into that state, death works in them. How, the lower they fall, and
the more they yield to their original sin and their corrupt nature,
they die out.
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