Another
reason why the missionary to the heathen should not directly, and
certainly not immediately, assail their civil governments, is that he
would thereby arouse their jealousies to a pitch fatal to his influence,
his usefulness, and most probably his life; and another reason is, that
this imprudence would effectually close the door, for a long time,
against all efforts, even the most judicious, to spread the gospel
amongst a people so needlessly and greatly prejudiced against it by an
unwise and abrupt application of its principles. For instance, what
folly and madness it would be for our missionaries to Burmah, to make a
direct assault on the political institutions of that country! How fatal
would it be to their lives, and how incalculably injurious to the cause
entrusted to their hands! And, if this can be said of them, after they
have spent ten, fifteen, and twenty years, in efforts to bring that
portion of the heathen world to a knowledge and love of the truth, how
much more emphatically could it be said if they had been in the field of
their labors but three or four years! And yet, even this short space of
time exceeds the average period of the Apostles' labor among those
different portions of the heathen world which they visited;--labor, too,
it must be remembered, not of the whole, nor even of half of "the
twelve.
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