We trust the present work, therefore, will prove a salutary check to the progress of that system whose practical effects have ever been, and ever must be, licentiousness, cruelty, and blood.
The narratives of Asaad Shidiak, Mrs. Judson, the persecutions in the West Indies, and in Switzerland, have never before been incorporated in any book of Martyrs. They serve to show the hideous nature of persecution, and the benefit of christian missions.
At the close of this volume will be found a sketch of the French revolution of 1789, as connected with persecution. It has long been the practice of infidels to sneer at christianity, because some of its nominal followers have exhibited a persecuting spirit. And although they knew that christianity condemns persecution in the most pointed manner, yet they have never had the generosity to discriminate between the system, and the abuse of the system by wicked men. Infidelity on the other hand, has nothing to redeem it. It imposes no restraint on the violent and lifelong passions of men. Coming to men with the Circean torch of licentiousness in her hand, with fair promises of freedom, she first stupefies the conscience, and brutifies the affections; and then renders her votaries the most abject slaves of guilt and crime. This was exemplified in the French revolution. For centuries, the bible had been taken away, and the key of knowledge wrested from the people. For a little moment, France broke the chains which superstition had flung around her. Not content, however, with this, she attempted to break the yoke of God: she stamped the bible in the dust, and proclaimed the jubilee of licentiousness, unvisited, either by present or future retribution. Mark the consequence. Anarchy broke in like a flood, from whose boiling surge blood spouted up in living streams, and on whose troubled waves floated the headless bodies of the learned, the good, the beautiful and the brave. The most merciless proscription for opinion's sake, followed. A word, a sigh, or a look supposed inimical to the ruling powers, was followed with instant death. The calm which succeeded, was only the less dreaded, because it presented fewer objects of terrific interest, as the shock of the earthquake creates more instant alarm, than the midnight pestilence, when it walks unseen, unknown amidst the habitations of a populous city.