God of just revenge—yea, ye hear the cracking of the bones and the hissing of the flames in the eternal Gehenna where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! There, there they burn, and perish not, for everlasting is the punishment! There, with never-satiated tongue, the flames lap at the shrieking victims of unbelief. There dies not the worm that gnaws their hearts through and through without ever destroying them, so that for ever there will be a heart to gnaw at in the breast of the godless! See, how the dark skin is stripped from the unbaptized child that, scarce born, has been flung away from the breast of the mother into the pool of everlasting damnation. . . .”
Here a woman fainted.
“But, belovèd,” continued the Reverend Twaddler, “God is a God of Love! It is not His will that the sinner shall be lost, but that he may be saved by the Grace, in Christ, through Faith! And therefore our Holland has been chosen to save what may be saved of those miserable ones! Therefore has He, in His inscrutable Wisdom, given power to a land of small compass but great and strong in the knowledge of God, power over the dwellers in those regions, that by the holy and ever inestimable Gospel they may be saved from the punishment of hell! The ships of our Holland sail the great waters to bring civilization, religion, Christianity, to the lost Javanese! Nay, our happy fatherland does not covet eternal bliss for itself alone: we wish to share it with the wretched creatures on the distant shores, who lie bound in the fetters of unbelief, superstition, and immorality! The consideration of the duties that are laid upon us to this end will form the seventh part of my address.”
For that which had preceded was the sixth. Among the duties we had to fulfil on behalf of those poor heathens were named the following:
- Giving liberal contributions in money to the Union of Missions.
- The support of the Bible Societies, in order to enable them to distribute Bibles in Java.
