Mr. Darwin was not regarded as a Christian, but he had the greatest
respect for good in Christianity, and was candid enough to acknowledge
it. This is the way in which he answered some shallow critics of
foreign missionaries:
They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifice and
the power of an idolatrous priesthood; a system of profligacy
unparalleled in any other part of the world; infanticide, a
consequence of that system; bloody wars where the conquerors
spared neither women nor children--that all these things
have been abolished, and that dishonesty, intemperance, and
licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction
of Christianity. For a voyager to forget these things is a
base ingratitude; for should he chance to be at the point of
shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that
the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far.
(2058)
* * * * *
F. A. McKenzie, the well-known foreign correspondent of the London
_Mail_, says, in the London _Christian World_:
A stranger stopt me, one day. “I can not understand,” said he,
“why you, a newspaper man, should advocate missionary work; it
is not your business. Why do you meddle with it?”
“I do so because I am a Christian imperialist,” I replied. “The
white man’s civilization is the best the world has seen, and the
white man’s civilization is rooted in Christianity. I know that
every missionary is an active campaigner, not merely for a new
theology, but also for a new life, based on the foundation-stone
of our civilization--the cross. I want the white man’s ideas to
triumph not for the glory of the whites, but for the betterment
of woman-life and child-life throughout the world.”
(2059)
=Missionary Work=--See SONG, EFFECTIVE.
=Missionary Work Admired by Atheist=--See ATHEIST’S GIFT TO
MISSIONS.