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Brooklyn (ffagle.Titukiuy eveSi\a. rvov. 20.___Cliristian Benevolent Enterprise?\Vc noticed in one of the morning papers recently a statement of the amount of money expended on Foreign Missions in this country and in England, and confess our astonishment at the declaration that in England, so long ago as 1825, the amount expended in this way had reached the enormous sum of XI,000 a-d.iv, or .£365,000 the year! Since then it has greatly increased, and probably docs not fall below §2,000,000 per year at the present time! And it is for this, and like action, that we hear England called, par excellence, the land of Christian enterprise and benevolence; as setting an example to all the rest of Christendom in her noble efforts to bring the heathen world to a saving knowledge of the Gospel.And so, sometime since, we had a similar glorifi cation of England and its Government because of her efforts to suppress the slave trade, as it appeared in a clause of the Ashburton Treaty. Much was said of her great sacrifices in this respect; of the millions expended in this noble cause; and of her prompt response to all the calls of humanity. For a'.l that she docs in this way honestly, and from just motives, we award her credit. Shelias done some splendid things, doubtless, and for these we honor her ; but in view of the fact above stated, compared with the condition of thousands at home—with the groans of suffering from past years still lingering in our cars, and the awful cry of want and woe which begins now to rise upward from the gaunt and terrified crowd—we cannot forbear asking why this lavish expenditure of sympathy in the wrong direction?— Why send Bibles and Missionaries to the Pagans oflndia, and the savages of the Sonth Seas, while your own brothers and their helpless wives and children are perishing at your doors? Better by far give the thousands lavished on the souls of foreign heathen, to buy food for the bodies of the famishing wretches at home. Worse than this if possible—why spend money in printing Testaments and Tracts, and mocking these poor suffereis by offering them these when their agonizing cry is, “ Bread, not Bibles mvr—Bread,give us Buead, or toe die!''—This is not Christianity. It is not obedience to that law which says, “ Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Christianity io not Bibles, tmolo, and Alicsinnnry cor»ie»ti^o alone, but justice, mercy, and an earnest and working faith which always, in all places, feeds the hungry’, clothes the naked, helps and blesses the needy and suffering.And why all this miserable cant about American slavery ? had enough, to he sure—but better that your philanthropy should begin at home. Free first your 8,000,000 of Irish slaves, and give them the right at least to dig roots enough from your nobility and church land to satisfy the gnawings of hunger. Free as many more millions who arc wearing out their lives in the cruel bondage of your gloomy prison-factoricF, and amid the systematic barbarities aad horrors of your coal-mines, and the slow dcath-tortures of your widows and orphans toiling eighteen hours out of the twenty-four for the miserable pittance of a few paltry farthings! or the equally murderous oppression op your wretched peasantry, from whom is clutched, by landholder and priest, most of the potatoes they have forced by their sweat and toil from the hard earth.— And having done this work of mercy, go to your one hundred millions of slaves in India, and give them freedom and happiness!Do so much as this ere you talk of negro slavery ; and while you enter a clause in your treaty with us for the suppression of this nefarious traffic, enter also a clause that shall suppress the abominable duties of your corn-laws, and suffer our gram to be distributed amoung your famine-struck population. Do this, or all your preachings of this sort, all your foreign missions and London church building, and splendid charities, shall be to us at least—nay, to all the world, wh’.it they really are, only so much miserable cant, unreal, insincere !
Newspaper Details
Brooklyn Eagle And Kings County Democrat
Brooklyn, New York, US
Sat, Nov 29, 1845
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Micklhes H.
USA 24 Nov 2024
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