Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/17

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COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY.


CHAPTER I.


These are they, O Lord!
Who in thy plain and simple gospel see
All mysteries, but who find no peace enjoined,
No brotherhood, no wrath denounced on them
Who shed their brethren's blood! Blind at noon-day
As owls; lynx-eyed in darkness.—Southey.


Christianity has now been in the world upwards of One Thousand Eight Hundred Years. For more than a thousand years the European nations have arrogated to themselves the title of Christian! some of their monarchs, those of most Sacred and most Christian Kings! We have long laid to our souls the flattering unction that we are a civilized and a Christian people. We talk of all other nations in all other quarters of the world, as savages, barbarians, uncivilized. We talk of the ravages of the Huns, the irruptions of the Goths; of the terrible desolations of Timour, or Zenghis Khan. We talk of Alaric and Attila, the sweeping carnage of Mahomet, or the cool cruelties of more modern Tippoos and Alies. We shudder at the war-cries of naked Indians, and the ghastly feasts of Cannibals; and bless our