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Augustine, 'Credo quia impossibile. Nature did not form him to be an unbeliever; unbelief is alien to his mind and contrary to his feelings." Here, only a few miles away, is the Slemish mountain where St. Patrick, then a captive of the rich cattle-owner Milcho, herded his sheep and swine. Here, when his flocks were sleeping, he poured out his prayers, a Christian voice in Pagan darkness.
Doctor Russell was my teacher in Latin and the Sciences, and Prof. Henry Giltner in Mathematics and Greek. The Doctor was a fine moralist, but an unbeliever. He was a fine teacher, and very popular with the boys. In the public debates in our society, Bro. J. B. Briney and I were always pitted against each other. We were the oldest and the nearest equal in our advancement, especially in this line.
I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a snake in his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of a man as bad as I. I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev. Samuel Robinson, My Dear Sir. In order to relieve your conscience of the stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in Ghosts, I herewith enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture."
And when there came unto them an apostle from God, confirming that scripture which was with them, some of those to whom the scriptures were given, cast the book of God behind their backs, as if they knew it not: and they followed the device which the devils devised against the kingdom of Solomon; and Solomon was not an unbeliever; but the devils believed not, they taught men sorcery, and that which was sent down to the two angels at Babel, Harût, and Marût: yet those who taught no man until they had said, Verily we are a temptation, therefore be not an unbeliever.
If the Christian king desires our arms, let him come and win them, but let him win them dearly. For my part, sweeter were a grave beneath the walls of Granada, on the spot I had died to defend, than the richest couch within her palaces earned by submission to the unbeliever." The words of Muza were received with enthusiastic shouts by the warlike part of the populace.
Business, work was suspended; the wheel of the cloth-workers ceased; the camels no longer knelt in the Jewish quarter of Smyrna, the Bridge of Caravans ceased to vibrate with their passing, the shops remained open only so long as was necessary to clear off the merchandise at any price; whoso of private persons had any superfluity of household stuff sold it off similarly, but yet not to Jews, for these were interdicted from traffic, business being the mark of the unbeliever, and punishable by excommunication, pecuniary mulcts, or corporeal chastisements.
They put two boxes on a mule and drove the twenty mules to the courtyard of the palace that the Jew had taken for himself. The man in charge of the mules declared he had a present for the Sultan, and the Unbeliever, whose grave was to be the meeting-place of all the dogs of Taza, gave orders that the boxes should be brought in and set before him.
In the cool of the evening grave Arabs in long white shirts and yellow sleeveless jackets walked slowly on the dusty path by the riverside towards Almayer's gate, and made solemn calls upon that Unbeliever under shallow pretences of business, only to get a glimpse of the young girl in a highly decorous manner.
I listened and gazed breathlessly, and at last came away from the telescope with a deep-drawn breath of regret. 'It is so lovely; it seems to carry one quite away from earth altogether: the infinite space stretching away and away. Oh, Mr. Forsyth, you do not doubt the existence of God, do you? 'No; I believe in a Supreme Being. I am not such an utter unbeliever as that.
This is supposed to convert the unbeliever; but the intelligent unbeliever coming to it is either bored or irritated by its extravagant absurdity, and if he admits our sincerity, it is only at the expense of our intelligence. A propagandist play for a political end is even more mischievous at least lovers of freedom have more cause for protest. It makes our heroes ridiculous.
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