Jesus tells us that many are called but few are chosen; that few enter
the strait gate and travel the narrow way, while many take the broad way
that leadeth to destruction. In other words, the large majority of
mankind, the large majority of even those who have the gospel preached
to them must be damned. When a human soul is born into the world, the
odds are at least ten to one that the Devil will get it. Can any pious
member of the Church who has thought of this take the responsibility of
becoming a parent? I thoroughly believe not. I am convinced that we have
so many Christian parents only because this very conspicuous aspect of
the case has not caught their view. If the parents could have any
assurance that the piety of their offspring would be in proportion to
their own, they would be justified in wedding in holiness. But alas! we
all know that some of the most religious parents have had some of the
most wicked children. Dearly beloved brethren and sisters pause and
calculate that for every little saint you give to heaven, you beget and
bear at least nine sinners who will eventually go to hell.
The remedy proposed is plain and simple as a gospel precept: let no
Christian have any child at all—a rule which, in the grandeur of its
absoluteness makes the poor timid and tentative Malthusianism very
ridiculous indeed. For this rule is drawn immediately from the New
Testament and cannot but be perfect as its source.
Let us think of a few of the advantages which would flow from its
practice. The profane have sometimes sneered that Jesus and his
disciples manifestly thought that the world would come to an end, the
millennium be inaugurated, within a very few years from the public
ministry of Jesus. Luckily the profane are always ignorant or shallow,
or both. For, as the New Jerusalem is to come down while Christians are
alive, and as Christians in the highest sense or Christians without
offspring must have come to an end with the first generation, it is
plain that the belief which has been sneered at was thoroughly well
founded; and that it has been disappointed only because the vast
majority of Christians have not been Christians in the highest sense at
all, but in their ignorance have continued to propagate like so many
heathen proletarians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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