The mission of infidels is not to enlighten, civilize and ennoble the nations. They have never enlightened, civilized or elevated a nation or a people since the world was made. They have never organized society, established peace and order in any place on this earth. They have established no civil institutions, no system of morals, no code of laws, no system of education, and no institutions of learning that deserve the name. Even the literature of the country has almost entirely been left to the believers in the Bible. It is an easy work to pull down civil government, subvert the foundation of organization, condemn the means of enlightenment, and object to them. It is an easy matter to deny everything and prove nothing; to doubt, vacillate and fear. It is an easy matter to distrust, fill others with distrust, destroy confidence, throw everything into confusion and uncertainty. Some men have fallen so fully into this state, that they hardly will venture to say they believe anything, have confidence in anything, or know anything. One man, under the blinding, benumbing and stupifying influence of unbelief, when asked whether he knew that he existed, hesitated to say he did.
What ability, knowledge or learning does it require, to deny everything? The most ignorant, illiterate and stupid, can deny as stoutly, as the most learned, enlightened, and talented. It requires no strength of mind to stand and deny—to declare in the most pertinacious manner, disbelief, want of confidence, doubts, distrusts and uncertainties in everything. A man who never read the Bible once through in his life, nor ten other books, who has the most corrupt character, can talk of inconsistencies, incongruities, contradictions and absurdities, in the Bible, as stoutly as anybody. Any blockhead could leap over the Falls of Niagara, or from the Suspension Bridge below. In the same way, any man with or without much mind, learning or talent, can leap into the dark abyss of unbelief, rejecting, contemning and despising all evidence; but, would it not be the part of prudence, of wisdom and discretion in such, to look before they leap? It is a fearful experiment they are making. If the step is a mistaken one, it can never be retraced beyond this life. He who makes the experiment, obtains nothing now, only the unbridled privilege of declaring the Bible false—religion priest-craft—that man will never be called to account, hence all men can do as they list.