Poisonous Serpents by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 31.

Poisonous Serpents.

By Editor

THE Missionary Herald for June says: "Twenty-two thousand lives are lost annually in India through the bite of venomous serpents and by wild beasts. Officials are seeking a remedy for this loss, thus far without avail. While commending such efforts, Mr. Howland, of Ceylon, pertinently asks: 'What complete remedy can there be until the belief of the cobra-worshiping Hindu is changed?' Serpents will live so long as men reverence them, and so long as they live they will bite. What India needs to save her from this fearful loss of life is a new religious faith. And yet there are those who tell us that the faith they have is good enough for them. One would think it sufficient answer to this assertion to point to the more than twenty regiments of men dying annually, the victims of a senseless superstition."

Perhaps thousands who read this item will shudder, and say that they are glad that they do not live in India; and probably never give a thought to the twelve-fold worse curse which afflicts our own Christian (?) land. India had, at the last census, a population of 241,120,525; the death rate from venomous serpents and wild beasts is, therefore, about one to each 12,000 inhabitants. But in the United States, with a population of only 60,000,000, the victims of intoxicating liquors annually number 60,000; about twelve times as many as are annually destroyed in India by beasts and serpents. What are our officials going to do about it? What some of them are doing is shown by the following from a daily of recent date:—

"Some time ago the Circuit Court of the United States in Iowa decided that breweries in existence when the prohibition law was passed could not be stopped without compensation to their owners; and now we hear of another ruling by the same Court, that drinking saloons are likewise entitled to protection. They are property which cannot be rendered useless without compensation."

Can India or any other mother-land show a worse state of affairs?