th the whole family of God;
because we love our God, and his God and Saviour, and desire our
brother to know and to love them too; because it is so unjust, so
selfish, so hateful, not to love and obey such a glorious Person as
Jesus Christ, who knows us, loves us, and has died to gain our hearts!
These are some of the reasons, rudely and roughly stated, why we
desire, with all our heart, that every man should believe in Jesus
Christ. But if any man, for any reason which may be beyond our
understanding or sympathy, desires to destroy this faith in all that
is most precious to us, then I ask, not in Christ's name,--for it is
unnecessary to appeal to Him,--but in the name of common sense and
common philanthropy, why he should not only labour to do this, but to
do it without apparently any apprehension of the untold misery which
he must occasion if he succeeds in his attempt? Do not tell us, with a
boast, that "the truth must be spoken, come what may!" Be it so; but
surely the _kind of_ truth which must be spoken must ever regulate the
manner in which it is spoken? Again, I bid you picture to yourselves a
person entering a family whose members were rejoicing in the thought
of a father's return, and announcing the intelligence of that father's
death, with a smile of pity or a sneer of contempt at their ignorant
happiness! Imagine such a one professing to be actuated by a mere love
of truth! Oh! if the terrible duty has been laid upon any one with a
human heart, of announcing to others intelligence which, if true, must
leave a blank to them in the world that can never be filled up, what
tender sympathy, what genuine sorrow becomes him who breaks the heavy
tidings! And such _ought_ to be the feelings of every man who, from
whatever cause, feels called upon to announce that the Christian
religion is false. If he _must_ make known that terrible fact to
believers in Jesus; if he _must_ tell them that the supposed Source of
all their life and joy has no existence, and that their faith in Him
is vain, let this be done with the solemnity and the sorrow which a
true brotherly sympathy would necessarily dictate. If the missionaries
of Christianity are warranted in preaching their gospel with joy, the
missionaries of an infidelity which professes only to destroy and
not to build up, should go forth on their dreadful vocation with the
feeling of martyrs, and with no other notes of triumph than sounds of
lamentation and woe! For if Christ