Heathens

“ The heathens had many such, some in heaven and some on earth, celestial deities, that were of highest rank and repute among them, and terrestrial ones, men made into gods, that were to mediate for men with the former, and were deputed by them to preside over earthly affairs. ”

“ The very heathens can tell us that, for it is curious, that among the heathen, in all ages and countries, those men who have found out great improvements in tilling the ground have been honoured and often worshipped as divine men—as gods, thereby shewing that the heathen, among all their idolatries, had a true and just notion about man’s practical skill and knowledge—that it could only come from Heaven, that it was by the inspiration and guidance of God above that skill in agriculture arose. ”

“ The effects of tradition are as visible among Christians as among heathens; and these traditions, as well as our own superior intelligence, lead us to regard the worship of the heathen as nonsensical, and we may say ridiculous. We can have no faith in this; we see no propriety in bowing down to gods made with our own hands, whether they be gods of gold, silver, wood or stone. ”

“ According to my definition of the word, a people are heathenish that do not know things as they ought. The Christian world, so called, are heathens as to their knowledge of the salvation of God. If those nations that we call heathen were civilized as we are, intelligent as we are, we would not call them heathen. The civilized world term those heathen who do not follow their customs, who are not educated as they are, and who do not worship according to the modern Christian form of worship. ”

“ 3 How glad the Heathens would have been,
That worship idols, wood, and stone,
If they the book of God had seen,
Or Jesus and his gospel known! ”

“ And first, seeing we daily pray for the conversion of the heathens, we must consider whether there be not some ordinary means and course for us to take to convert them, or whether prayer for them be only referred to God’s extraordinary work from heaven. ”

“ Singleton, Alice and I never59 can agree as to just what a heathen is. All our squabbles have been about that. The old hymn pictured the heathen in his blindness bowing down to wood and stone; but I'm disposed to broaden my definition to include all who believe in fairies good or bad, and persons who honestly believe in signs, omens, and lucky stones and all who have the receipt of fern-seed and walk invisible—there's Shakespeare for that. Some very good Christians are also very nice heathens: we mustn't be narrow and bigoted about such things. ”

“ Almost never is there lacking the relation of some remarkable event or edifying deed in the conquest of the heathens to our holy faith, which recreates the spirit and invites one to praise the goodness of our sweet Jesus. ”

“ He condemns those that " will not hear His Church as heathens and publicans," Mat. xviii. 17 - that is, as " worshippers of the devil," for such were the heathens; and " as people abandoned by God," and given up " to a reprobate sense," for such the publicans were reputed among the Jews. (6.) The Holy Ghost gives the same command to all by the mouth of St Paul: " Remember your prelates, who have spoken the Word of God to you, whose faith follow . ”

“ People of weak minds and of little learning, who have tasted the Pierian spring but not drunk deep at it, when they read an account of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses and of the images dedicated to them, and hear that the heathens were Idolators, or worshippers of Images, give credit to these stories, without any further inquiry or trouble. ”

“ When we look among pagans and savages, we are struck with their vices and follies, which raise our disgust, or excite our pity. But who hath made us to differ from them! Is it not that divine Sovereign who "divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam," who cast our lot among the civilized and enlightened, who having been taught, of God, taught us the way of happiness? Had we been born among heathens, we should probably have been heathens ”

“ We know that the early Christians when taking over to their use the temples and altars of their so-called heathen predecessors, or when erecting a church where a temple had previously stood, held their worship there and performed their dances to their God as the heathens had done to theirs. ”

“ But the memory of that immense absurdity remains as a sort of measure and check by which to keep sane, not only on the subject of Christian churches, but also on the subject of heathen temples. Now a great many people have talked about heathen origins as the distinguished traveller talked about Christian origins. Indeed a great many modern{173} heathens have been very hard on heathenism. A great many modern humanitarians have been very hard on the real religion of humanity. ”

“ The heathen Ammonites sacrificed their infants with distinct religious purposes; but these night-hags, with no higher aim than those "two dollars a piece." Assuredly you have "heathens at your door." "Christendom is a beastly land." So report some of my countrymen who have travelled abroad, and saw only its dark half. True, they are un fair; but as far as the said beastliness goes, the impressions they have received are correct. Heathendom cannot com pete with Christendom in its beastliness as well. ”

“ They who bear sovereign sway in Christian states, moreover, have not hesitated, for their advantage and greater security, to form alliances with Turks and heathens, and have required their subjects settled or about to settle in heathen countries to assume no greater liberty, either in civil or spiritual things, than was conceded by treaty, or than the barbarous authorities permitted. ”

“ And you wonder why we are heathen? The only positive point Christians have impressed on heathenism is that they would sacrifice religion, honor, principle, as they do life, for—gold. And they sanctimoniously tell the poor heathen: You must save your soul by believing as we do! ”

“ It is now well understood that the deepest thing in heathen life and heathen literature was ever the cry after the living God, and the effort to find Him; the grandest passages in the religious records of heathendom are the words in which the founders of the great pagan systems proclaimed what they believed had been made known to them of His Being and His Will; and the gladdest, in truth the only joyous, passages in pagan history, are the records of the generations in which men persuaded themselves that God had at length visited His world. ”

“ What but the Holy Spirit, who is the author and giver of the life of grace, could have wrought such a change from the once dark, perverse, and ignorant heathen, to this now convinced, enlightened, humble, and believing Christian! How manifestly is the uncontrolled sovereignty of the Divine will exercised in the calling and translating of sinners from darkness to light! What a lesson may the nominal Christian of a civilized country sometimes learn from the simple, sincere religion of a converted heathen! ”

“ To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the heathen answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand to it that the heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements, and that the nations, forgetting their first love and the significance of their own speech, became confused and were betrayed into foul stories about the pure Gods—these learned men, I say, agree no whit among themselves. Nay, they differ one from another, not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and Theagenes, and the rest whom thou didst laugh to scorn. ”

“ The very reverse of this, as you have seen, marks the worship of the heathen. They are not satisfied, unless they can have some object before them, to which they can make their offerings and their prayers. Thus daily are they engaged in a service which, above all others, is the most offensive and provoking to a holy God—a service which has caused him to declare, that idolaters shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ I have prayed for the heathen, but I want to feel the burden of the heathen in a new way," it is an indication of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, beloved, if you will take [pg 159] time and let God lay the burden of the heathen heavier upon you until you begin to feel, "I have never prayed," it will be the most blessed thing in your life. And so with regard to the church: We want to take up our position as members of the church of Christ in this land ”

“ And Jesus Christ our health and strength Be known to all the heathen, And unto God convert them. God then will thank, and thee will praise The heathen with glad voices; Let all the world for joy upraise A song with mighty noises, Because thou art earth’s judge, O Lord, Nor leav’st the righteous quailing; Thy word it is both bed and board, And for all folk availing In the right path to keep them. Let them thank God, and thee adore, Thy folk of deeds of grace full. The land grows fruitful more and more; Thy word it is successful. ”

“ Their age was one in which the Church which represented Christianity was most lofty and unchallenged in its claims, most ruthless in the sweep of its pretensions, and most utterly destitute and unconscious in its appreciation of the spirit of the gospel. A heathen was a child of the Devil, not of God ”

“ For when one is asked, What is the distinguishing characteristic of heathenism? one is always ready to say, Idolatry, which is not true. The distinguishing characteristic of heathenism is the stress which it lays upon ceremonial. To the pagan religions, both of the ancient and of the modern world, rites were the indispensable element in religion. The gifts of the gods, the abundance of fruits, the security of the state, depended upon the full and accurate performance of ritual. ”

“ God, and not man; God, and not the work of men's hands; the Creator of all, and not the creature of men's fancies. Thou art the God who hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, the upper and lower world, and all the creatures that are in both." Thus we Christians distinguish ourselves from the heathen, that, while they worship gods which they have made, we are worshipping the God that made us and all the world. ”

“ The most strenuous advocate of the salvation of the virtuous heathen will grant that their salvation does not descend from the idol of wood and stone before which they grovel. It is from the True God, the Living God, that the blessing proceeds. It is His touch, His Spirit, His Presence which has consecrated the earnest though erring worship of the poor idolater. ”

“ If there were no Gospel stories to calm down my childish passion's rage, that excitement and rush of the so-called Christendom which whirls men and women into premature graves was unknown to me. If heathenism is the reign of darkness, it is the reign of moon and stars, of obscure lights no doubt, but withal of repose and comparative innocence. ”

“ For though they worship not the same idols, they worship Christ with the same heart: and they can never do otherwise, whilst they live in the same lusts. So that the unmortified Christian and the heathen are of the same religion. For though they have different objects to which they do direct their prayers, that adoration in both is but forced and ceremonious, and the deity they truly worship is the god of the world, the great lord of lusts: to him they bow with the whole powers of soul and sense. ”

“ We smile at the religious proceedings of the heathen who, after praying to his god for rain until he loses patience, takes him down and thrashes, kicks, and variously maltreats him for neglecting his duties. ”

“ But where are now the advocates of Paganism, and the apologists for Idolatry? The moral condition of the heathen is better understood to-day, by the children in our schools, than it was by the enlightened classes of society fifty years ago; and the necessity of the gospel to meet the wants, and heal the sufferings of mankind, has become a familiar and undisputed truth. And by whom have these idle tales and gross fabrications been exposed? By the men of God, sent forth from our midst, who have lived with the heathen, and for the heathen ”

“ Nay, what is the entire sacrificial cultus of heathenism, but a confession that the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by their offerings and sacrifices. ”

“ The great question to-day is not a question for the heathen world, but for the Christian Church—shall we respond to the opportunity they are flinging in our faces? To-day there are more hands in heathen lands stretched out for the Gospel of Jesus than there are Christian hands stretched out with the Gospel. More hearts in those far-away lands are dumbly praying for the light than there are of us praying that they may receive the light—far more. ”

“ The months I have spent in these heathen lands have made deep impression upon me, and the problem of heathenism has loomed up before me as never before. When one sees thousands prostrating themselves in a Mohammedan mosque and chanting in unison their ascription of greatness to God, or when one sees a Hindu devotee so absorbed in his prayer to a senseless idol that he is unconscious of the kicks and shouts of the passers-by, one comes to realize that man must have a god. The religious instinct is a part of his nature. It is [202] more than a mere capacity for religion. ”

“ It is a common thing for heathen that have worshiped any god under an image or statue, or any graven thing to be introduced, when they come into the other life, to certain spirits in place of their gods or idols, in order that they may rid themselves of their fantasies. ”