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 Christianity is false, we are "yet in our
sins, all who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, and we are
of all men most miserable!"




THOUGHTS UPON THE FINAL JUDGMENT.