Instead of three hundred and
fifty millions, a third of the human race upon the most exaggerated
estimate, read eighty or one hundred millions at most. Africa, as it
regards religion, counts for a cipher. Europe, America, and the half of
Asia, as to space, are Christian. Consequently, the total _facit_,
as regards Christianity, is not what many amiable infidels make it to
be. My dears, your wish was father to that thought.] of this world,
shall have been the law that overrides the whole. That consummation is
not immeasurably distant. Even now, from considerations connected with
China, with New Zealand, Borneo, Australia, we may say, that already
the fields are white for harvest. But alas! the interval is brief
between Christianity small, and Christianity great, as regards space or
terraqueous importance, compared with that interval which separates
Christianity formally professed, from Christianity thankfully
acknowledged by universal man in beauty and power.
Here, therefore, is one spoke in the wheel for so vast a change as war
dethroned, viz., that you see no cause, though you should travel round
the whole horizon, adequate to so prodigious an effect. What could do
it? Why, Christianity could do it. Aye, true; but man disarms
Christianity.
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