Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/94

72 distressing to think, that this nation has been for ages in its present demoralized and degraded condition, with no light beaming on the people, but that derived from atheism and polytheism, with now and then an obscure ray from a questionable form of Christianity. If we were sure that this state of things would always continue, or that the Gospel was not destined at an early period to subjugate and renovate China, we might almost be led to grow weary of such an unimproving and unimprovable world. To see the demon of darkness reigning in one soul is painful, but to see him rampant over a whole nation, and that nation constituting one-third of the human race, is beyond measure distressing, and might well induce one to exclaim, "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of this people."

There are, doubtless, amongst such a vast concourse of human beings, numbers, who, according to the light they have, lead tolerably decent lives, as it regards moral and social duties; but they must all be destitute of right views of divine and eternal things; and where these fundamental truths are misapprehended, there can be little hope of the claims of human relations being properly sustained; in fact, experience forces upon those who have had the most frequent and intimate intercourse with them, the unwelcome truth, that amongst them, in a remarkable degree, "there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God; they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre, with their