TO THE OPPONENTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
WHAT boon, what reward, have our opponents to offer for the renunciation of Christianity? To what would they convert us? What Heaven have they to propose? What immortality to reveal? What sublime views of a creation and a Creator? What authentic record of the past? What prophetic hope of the future? What account of our origin? What high ultimatum of our destiny? What terrors have they to offer to stay the torrent of corruption? What balm and consolation to the sons and daughters of anguish? To these and a thousand kindred questions they must and will answer, None; none at all. The promise to him that disbelieves the founder of the Christian religion; to him that neglects and disdains the salvation of the gospel; to him who tramples under foot the blood of Christ, and insults the Spirit of favor; to him who traduces Moses, Daniel, and Job; to him who vilifies Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John; to him who devotes his soul to the lusts of the flesh; who disdains Heaven; who deifies his appetite; who degrades himself to a mere animal and eulogizes philosophy:—to this man they promise an eternal sleep, an everlasting death. This is the faith, the hope, and joy for which they labor with so much zeal and care and pain. Divesting man of all that renders life a blessing and death supportable; denuding him of all the dignity and honor which have ever been the admiration of the wise and good; and reducing him wholly to the earth, is, by our opponents, the true philosophy, the just science, the valuable knowledge. In their estimation a colony of bees, co-operating in building of store-houses and cells, and afterwards stowing them full of animal life, humming from flower to flower, while the sun shines; and in its absence sucking the pieces which they have collected, is the grand model of what man would be and what he would do were he under the benign influence of just knowledge and sound philosophy.—Sel.