CHRISTIANITY DID IT

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 10.

CHRISTIANITY DID IT.

It is thus that James Russel Lowell speaks of the criticisms brought by skeptics against Christianity:—

“The worst kind of religion is no religion at all; and these men, living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in ‘the amusement of going without religion,’ may be thankful that they live in lands where the gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters of the French Revolution.

When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children, unspoiled and unpolluted,—a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, manhood respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard,—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation, and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their view. But so long as these men are dependent upon the religion which they discard, for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of the life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.”