The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" RevelationsGraves, Kersey
Religion
The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations
Graves, Kersey
Free thought
for his infidelity by the Holy Sacrament; in 1629 Alexander Leighton had
his nose slit and his ears cut off, and was imprisoned for eleven
years for publishing a work against miracles. To make the matter short,
without extending the list, it has been estimated that _forty thousand_
perished at the hands of Christians in _forty y ears for infidelity,
heresy,_ or other opinions deemed unsound by orthodox. And thus it
will be perceived that infidelity has had its martyrs as well as
Christianity; and that Christians, in putting these men to death, were
robbing the world (according to "The New-York Evangelist")of its real
benefactors. Oh, shame! Christianity, where is thy blush?
CHAPTER LI.--SEND NO MOKE BIBLES TO THE HEATHEN.
A recent work by a Christian writer states that there are now employed
in the work of converting the heathen to Christianity fifteen thousand
missionaries, and that they succeed in converting about ten thousand
a year. From this statement, it appears that ten thousand missionaries
make annually one convert apiece, while five thousand make none. And the
cost the writer estimates to be about twenty thousand dollars for each
convert. C. Wiseman estimated it, about thirty years ago, to be ten
thousand dollars apiece. And, while these ten thousand converts were
made, the heathen population increased in numbers five millions. Thus it
appears they increase two hundred times faster than they are converted.
How long will it take, at such rates, to effect the entire conversion
of the world? and what will be the cost? All the gold ever dug from
the mines of Golconda and California would be but a drop in the bucket
compared with the requisite amount. The question naturally arises
here, Do the results justify such an enormous expenditure of time
and treasure, say nothing of the loss of health on the part of the
missionaries? A learned Hindoo stated, in a speech made in London in
1876, that the conversions made in India are confined principally to the
low, ignorant, superstitious class, who do not possess sufficient sense
and intelligence to know the difference between the religion they are
converted to and the religion they are converted from. Are such converts
worth ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars apiece? The case suggests
the story of the Hibernian who stated his horse had but two faults:
"First, he is hard to catch; second, he is no account when caught."
The heathen must be hard to convert if it requires an expense of ten
thousand dollars apiece, and of but little account when converted if
they know nothing about the nature of the religion they are converted
to. There are various considerations which go to prove that the hundreds
of millions of dollars expended annually in this enterprise are worse
than wasted:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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