150 Year Old Words

[Marilyn]

Check this out. This is an excerpt from McGuffey's Reader of 1854. This was the primary reader that was used in teaching many of our great-great grandparents to read.

"If you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, to question the reality and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding. Whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice; whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there be any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the flood-gates of immorality and crime. I need not say that when a people have once done this. They can no longer exist as a tranquil and happy people. Every bond that holds society together would be ruptured; fraud and treachery would take the place of confidence between man and man; the tribunals would be scenes of bribery and injustice. Avarice, perjury, ambition and revenge would walk through the land, and render it more the dwelling place of savage beast than the tranquil abode of civilized, Christianized men and women."

Sound a little like our world today?? For our own sakes, and for that of the nation, I hope it is not too late.....

[DianaB]

That certainly does sound like our world today. Isn't it sad that even back then they could tell what would happen if people ever started doubting the Bible?

[Janet]

What is even sadder....I just can't see it getting any better.

Those words were so true, but back then people were so much more religious and only a few religions existed, not like today. They knew what was going to happen, they read it in the scriptures.