Women -- Biography; Women -- Social and moral questions
In dealing with many who avow themselves unbelievers in Christianity,
we not unfrequently meet with an objection by the help of which they
attempt to construct an argument against our religion. The tendencies
of the mind we are told, are entirely dependent on the development of
the brain, and the external influences operating upon these, make up
together the sum of the influences concerned in the production of the
faiths of the world. These sceptical reasoners tell us that it is just
as irrational to expect Christianity to spring up in the universal
mind, as to expect to paint the whole globe with one particular flower.
The soil has laws which determine its products; and the mind has laws
which determine its beliefs. How shall we meet this? We might deny that
the faith that worketh by love, purifieth the heart, and overcometh the
world, is the product of suggestion, which is multiform; and assert it
to be the judgment of reason, which is one and the same over all the
world, in every mind and age. But we prefer appealing to the practical
refutation afforded us by experience. It is a fact that our Christian
religion has already traversed the globe, rooting itself in every soil,
and bearing fruit in every climate. When civilization has done her
utmost, Christianity can out-dazzle her sublimest triumphs. In the
clime where philosophy holds court with refinement—where poor
vulgarity cannot breathe, we challenge the world to point out a single
instance in which the gospel was unable to accommodate itself to the
peculiar requirements of the people. What has been its effects in the
land of terror, upon the savagest of human beings. It has lifted the
cannibal from his pool of blood, and led him like a little child to the
altar of consecration. The door of the world has been thrown open, and
the Lord’s servants have been commanded to enter in. India has been
made accessible to the missionaries of every Church. The gospel is
advancing rapidly among the teeming millions of the celestial empire.
In Africa, degraded Fingoes, stupid Hottentots, and warlike Kaffirs,
have had their understandings enlightened, and their hearts softened,
by Divine truth and grace.
“Sound the timbrel, strike the lyre,
Wake the trumpet’s blast of fire!”
for piety is independent of circumstance.
_BIOGRAPHY._
Mary Jane Graham, was born in London, on the 11th of April, 1803, where
her father was engaged in a respectable business. She was the subject
of early religious convictions. At the age of seven, her habits of
secret prayer evidenced the influence of Divine grace upon her soul.
During the greater part of her childhood, and the commencement of her
riper years, she was enabled to walk with God in sincerity, and without
any considerable declension.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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