Observing the ravages of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire uses the opportunity to ridicule Alexander Pope's belief in God.

Suffering constitutes the greatest challenge to the Christian faith

The Isenheim Altarpiece is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Niclaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516.

The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God's justice and love.

15,000 people die in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake

Allegory of the 1755 Earthquake, by João Glama Strobërle (who depicted himself standing on a pile of rubble on the lower-right corner). The painting depicts, on the upper-left corner, an angel holding a fiery sword (a personification of divine judgement).

On 1 November 1755 Lisbon was devastated by an earthquake. Being All Saints Day, the churches were full at the time, and thirty of them were destroyed. Within six minutes 15,000 people had died and 15,000 more were dying. One of many stunned by the news was the French philosopher and writer, Voltaire. For months he alluded to it in his letters in terms of passionate horror. How could anybody now believe in the benevolence and omnipotence of God? He ridiculed Alexander Pope's lines in his Essay on Man, which had been written in a secure and comfortable villa in Twickenham:


Pope's Villa, Twickenham by Samuel Scott (c. 1759)

"And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."

Voltaire believes the earthquake proves God is either not good or not almighty

François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state.  Pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1735.

Voltaire had always revolted against this philosophy of Optimism. Would Pope have repeated his glib lines if he had been in Lisbon? They seemed to Voltaire illogical (interpreting evil as good), irreverent (attributing evil to Providence) and injurious (inculcating resignation instead of constructive action). He first expressed his protest in his Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon, which asks why, if God is free, just and beneficent, we suffer under his rule. It is the old conundrum that God is either not good or not almighty. Either he wants to stop suffering but cannot, or he could but will not. Whichever it is, how can we worship him as God? Voltaire's second protest was to write his satirical novel Candide, the story of an ingenuous young man, whose teacher Dr Pangloss, a professor of optimism, keeps blandly assuring him that 'all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds', in defiance of their successive misfortunes. When they are shipwrecked near Lisbon, Candide is nearly killed in the earthquake, and Dr. Pangloss is hanged by the Inquisition. Voltaire writes: 'Candide, terrified, speechless, bleeding, palpitating, said to himself: "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the rest be?"


The problem of suffering affects us through life from birth to the grave and is enough to make you an atheist

Caricature of Joseph Parker (1830-1902). Caption read "Congregational Union?".Published in Vanity Fair, 19 April 1884. Carlo Pellegrini (1839–1889)

The problem of suffering is far from being of concern only to philosophers, however. It impinges upon nearly all of us personally; few people go through life entirely unscathed: It may be a childhood deprivation resulting in lifelong emotional turmoil, or a congenital disability of mind or body. Or suddenly and without warning we are overtaken by a painful illness, redundancy at work, poverty or bereavement. Or again, perhaps we are afflicted by involuntary singleness, a broken love affair, an unhappy marriage, divorce, depression or loneliness. Suffering comes in many unwelcome forms, and sometimes we not only ask God our agonized questions 'Why?' and 'Why me?' but even like Job rage against him, accusing him of injustice and indifference. I know of no Christian leader who has been more forthright in confessing his anger than Joseph Parker, who was minister of the City Temple from 1874 until his death in 1902. He says in his autobiography that up to the age of 68 he never had a religious doubt. Then his wife died, and his faith collapsed. 'In that dark hour', he wrote, 'I became almost an atheist. For God had set his foot upon my prayers and treated my petitions with contempt. If I had seen a dog in such agony as mine, I would have pitied and helped the dumb beast; yet God spat upon me and cast me out as an offence - out into the waste wilderness and the night black and starless."

The problem of evil is in the Bible but not resolved

William L. Rowe's example of natural evil: "In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering." Rowe also cites the example of human evil where an innocent child is a victim of violence and thereby suffers.

It needs to be said at once that the Bible supplies no thorough solution to the problem of evil, whether 'natural' evil or 'moral', that is, whether in the form of suffering or of sin. Its purpose is more practical than philosophical. Consequently, although there are references to sin and suffering on virtually every page, its concern is not to explain their origin but to help us to overcome them.

Our sufferings and the cross of Christ

Christ on the Cross, by Carl Heinrich Bloch, showing the skies darkened

My object in this chapter is to explore what relation there might be between the cross of Christ and our sufferings. So I shall not elaborate other standard arguments about suffering which the textbooks include, but only mention them as an introduction.

Suffering is an alien intrusion into the world

Christ healing an infirm woman by James Tissot, 1886-1896.

Christ healing a bleeding woman. Photo from Catacombes of Rome

First, according to the Bible suffering is an alien intrusion into God's good world, and will have no part in his new universe. It is a Satanic and destructive onslaught against the Creator. The book of Job makes that clear. So do Jesus' description of an infirm woman as 'bound by Satan', his 'rebuking' of disease as he rebuked demons, Paul's reference to his 'thorn in the flesh' as 'a messenger of Satan' and Peter's portrayal of Jesus' ministry as 'healing all who were under the power of the devil.' ' So whatever may be said later about the 'good' which God can bring out of suffering, we must not forget that it is good out of evil.

Suffering is often due to sin

Job and his friends. Ilya Repin (1844–1930)

Secondly, suffering is often due to sin. Of course originally disease and death entered the world through sin. But I am now thinking of contemporary sin. Sometimes suffering is due to the sin of others as when children suffer from unloving or irresponsible parents, the poor and hungry from economic injustice, refugees from the cruelties of war, and road casualties caused by drunken drivers. At other times suffering can be the consequence of our own sin (the reckless use of our freedom) and even its penalty. We must not overlook those biblical passages where Sickness is attributed to the punishment of God. At the same time we must firmly repudiate the dreadful Hindu doctrine of karma which attributes all suffering to wrong-doing in this or a previoius existence, and the almost equally dreadful doctrine of Job's so-called comforters. They trotted out their conventional orthodoxy that all personal suffering is due to personal sin, and one of the major purposes of the book of Job is to contradict that popular but wrong-headed notion. Jesus categorically rejected it too (e.g. Lk 13:1-5; Jn 9:1-3).

Suffering is due to our human sensivity to pain

Two lepers denied entrance to town, 14th century from Miniatur aus einer Handschrift des Vinzenz von Beauvais

Thirdly, suffering is due to our human sensitivity to pain. Misfortune is made worse by the hurt (physical or emotional) that we feel. But the pain sensors of the central nervous system give valuable warning-signals, necessary for personal and social survival. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the discovery by Dr Paul Brand at Vellore Christian Hospital in South India that Hansen's disease ('leprosy') numbs the extremities of the body, so that the ulcers and infections which develop are secondary problems, due to loss of feeling. Nerve reactions have to hurt if we are to protect ourselves. 'Thank God for inventing pain!' wrote Philip Yancey; 'I don't think he could have done a better job. It's beautiful."

Suffering is due to our environment

People seeking refuge from flood in Jawa Tengah, Java. ca. 1865–1876 by Raden Saleh

Fourthly, suffering is due to the kind of environment in which God has placed us. AIthough most human suffering is caused by human sin (C. S. Lewis reckoned four-fifths of it, and Hugh Silvester nineteen-twentieths, i.e. 95%), natural disasters such as flood, hurricane, earthquake and drought are not. True, it can be argued that God did not intend the earth's 'inhospitable areas' to be inhabited, let alone increased by ecological irresponsibility. Yet most people go on living where they were born and have no opportunity to move. What can one say, then, about the so-called laws of nature which in storm and tempest relentlessly overwhelm innocent people? C. S. Lewis went so far as to say that 'not even Omnipotence could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and "inexorable" Nature'. 'What we need for human society', Lewis continued, 'is exactly what we have - a neutral something', stable and having 'a fixed nature of its own', as the arena in which we may act freely towards each other and him. If we lived in a world in which God prevented every evil from happening, like Superman in Alexander Salkind's films, free and responsible activity would be impossible.
 

Suffering is not meaningless and has purpose

The Christ as the Suffering Redeemer is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna, dated to c. 1488-1500.

There have always been some who insist that suffering is meaningless, and that no purpose whatever can be detected in it. In the ancient world these included both the Stoics (who taught the need to submit with fortitude to nature's inexorable laws) and the Epicureans (who taught that the best escape from a random world was indulgence in pleasure). And in the modern world secular existentialists believe that everything, including life, suffering and death, is meaningless and therefore absurd. But Christians cannot follow them down that blind alley. For Jesus spoke of suffering as being both 'for God's glory', that God's Son might be glorified through it, and 'so that the work of God might be displayed' (Jn11:4 and Jn 9:3). This seems to mean that in some way (still to be explored) God is at work revealing his glory in and through suffering, as he did (though differently) through Christ's. What then is the relationship between Christ's sufferings and ours? How does the cross speak to us in our pain?

Source: Stott, John R. W. The Cross of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986; reprint, 2006, pages 303-306.

Against the advice of his contemporaries, William Carey decides to export Baptist churches from England to India. After seven years, Carey baptizes his first convert.

William Carey: The Shoemaker Who Became the Founder of Modern Missions; John Brown Myers; London 1887

"Expect great things; attempt great things."

William Carey's motto on a hanging in St. James Church, Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, where Carey attended as a boy

At a meeting of Baptist leaders in the late 1700s, a newly ordained minister stood to argue for the value of overseas missions. He was abruptly interrupted by an older minister who said, "Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he'll do it without consulting you or me."


That such an attitude is inconceivable today is largely due to the subsequent efforts of that young man, William Carey.

Plodder

A shoemaker in the Georgian era, from The Book of English Trades, 1821.

Carey was raised in the obscure, rural village of Paulerpury, in the middle of England. He apprenticed in a local cobbler's shop, where the nominal Anglican was converted. He enthusiastically took up the faith, and though little educated, the young convert borrowed a Greek grammar and proceeded to teach himself New Testament Greek.

William Carey Baptist Chapel in Hackleton

When his master died, he took up shoemaking in nearby Hackleton, where he met and married Dorothy Plackett, who soon gave birth to a daughter. But the apprentice cobbler's life was hard—the child died at age 2—and his pay was insufficient. Carey's family sunk into poverty and stayed there even after he took over the business.

The Latin Malmesbury Bible from 1407.

"I can plod," he wrote later, "I can persevere to any definite pursuit." All the while, he continued his language studies, adding Hebrew and Latin, and became a preacher with the Particular Baptists. He also continued pursuing his lifelong interest in international affairs, especially the religious life of other cultures.

Portrait of a group of Moravian Church members with King George II of Great Britain, attributed to Johann Valentin Haidt, circa 1752–1754.

Carey was impressed with early Moravian missionaries and was increasingly dismayed at his fellow Protestants' lack of missions interest. In response, he penned An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. He argued that Jesus' Great Commission applied to all Christians of all times, and he castigated fellow believers of his day for ignoring it: "Multitudes sit at ease and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow sinners, who to this day, are lost in ignorance and idolatry."

Carey didn't stop there: in 1792 he organized a missionary society, and at its inaugural meeting preached a sermon with the call, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!" Within a year, Carey, John Thomas (a former surgeon), and Carey's family (which now included three boys, and another child on the way) were on a ship headed for India.

Stranger in a strange land

A Peutinger Table's depiction of Muziris near the tip of India where St. Thomas is believed to have landed in 52 A.D.

Thomas and Carey had grossly underestimated what it would cost to live in India, and Carey's early years there were miserable. When Thomas deserted the enterprise, Carey was forced to move his family repeatedly as he sought employment that could sustain them. Illness racked the family, and loneliness and regret set it: "I am in a strange land," he wrote, "no Christian friend, a large family, and nothing to supply their wants." But he also retained hope: "Well, I have God, and his word is sure."

Realm of Mughal Bengal

He learned Bengali with the help of a pundit, and in a few weeks began translating the Bible into Bengali and preaching to small gatherings.


When Carey himself contracted malaria, and then his 5-year-old Peter died of dysentery, it became too much for his wife, Dorothy, whose mental health deteriorated rapidly. She suffered delusions, accusing Carey of adultery and threatening him with a knife. She eventually had to be confined to a room and physically restrained.


"This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me," Carey wrote, though characteristically added, "But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here."


Gift of tongues

Serampore College

In October 1799, things finally turned. He was invited to locate in a Danish settlement in Serampore, near Calcutta. He was now under the protection of the Danes, who permitted him to preach legally (in the British-controlled areas of India, all of Carey's missionary work had been illegal).

Fort William College, The Exchange, Calcutta, c1800

Carey was joined by William Ward, a printer, and Joshua and Hanna Marshman, teachers. Mission finances increased considerably as Ward began securing government printing contracts, the Marshmans opened schools for children, and Carey began teaching at Fort William College in Calcutta.


In December 1800, after seven years of missionary labor, Carey baptized his first convert, Krishna Pal

In December 1800, after seven years of missionary labor, Carey baptized his first convert, Krishna Pal, and two months later, he published his first Bengali New Testament. With this and subsequent editions, Carey and his colleagues laid the foundation for the study of modern Bengali, which up to this time had been an "unsettled dialect."

States and union territories of India by the most commonly spoken first language.

Carey continued to expect great things; over the next 28 years, he and his pundits translated the entire Bible into India's major languages: Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit and parts of 209 other languages and dialects.

An 18th-century painting depicting sati.

He also sought social reform in India, including the abolition of infanticide, widow burning (sati), and assisted suicide. He and the Marshmans founded Serampore College in 1818, a divinity school for Indians, which today offers theological and liberal arts education for some 2,500 students.

By the time Carey died, he had spent 41 years in India without a furlough. His mission could count only some 700 converts in a nation of millions, but he had laid an impressive foundation of Bible translations, education, and social reform.


William Carey University is a private Christian liberal arts college located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the United States, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mississippi Baptist Convention. The main campus is located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with a second campus located in the Tradition community near Gulfport, Mississippi and Biloxi, Mississippi.

His greatest legacy was in the worldwide missionary movement of the nineteenth century that he inspired. Missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among thousands of others, were impressed not only by Carey's example, but by his words "Expect great things; attempt great things." The history of nineteenth-century Protestant missions is in many ways an extended commentary on the phrase.

Galli, Mark and Ted Olson, eds. 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2000, pages 244-246.

Running away from society has long been a pastime. Who was the first monk? How did monasteries begin?

ASCETICS AND MONKS

St. Anthony the Great of Egypt, considered the Father of Christian Monasticism

Josephus, John the Baptist, and Qumran

John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness by Anton Raphael Mengs, 1760

In New Testament times there were both individual and communal ascetics in Palestine.  Josephus, the Jewish historian, mentions that he received some of his teaching from a hermit called Banus.  John the Baptist, living a solitary ascetic life in the Judean desert, also represents this tradition.  On the communal side, the best-known are the Essenes, of whom the group at Qumran who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls were the most prominent.  But some Essenes lived ascetic lives in their community, as did some of the Pharisees.

James, the Lord's brother, and moral laxity

Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, early 6th century

None of the earliest Christians appears to have lived as a hermit or in an ascetic community.  Individuals, however, were noted for their rigour of life and devotion to God.  James, the Lord's brother, for example, was admired by many non-Christian Jews for his constant fasting and prayer.  Also, in the early period, any consistent Christian life was likely to be viewed as extremely ascetic by a morally lax society.  Some noble Roman ladies, who may have been Christians, are reported by pagan sources to have lived in mourning and seclusion for years, presumably because they had no time for the pagan social life surrounding them.

Martyrdom, Syriac-speaking churches, the spiritual elite, widows, virgins, Jewish-Christian groups, Marcionites, Montanists, Encratites, Clement and Origen

Clement from Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens (1584) by André Thévet. Origen reportedly studied under Clement of Alexandria and was influenced by his thought.

While Christianity was under threat of persecution, congregations tended to be small, and to keep very high moral standards (even if there were some lapses, which were severely punished).  Martyrdom was valued as the supreme example of devotion to God.  Although some churches may have had church membership requirements that were ascetic (for instance, some Syriac-speaking appear to have accepted as baptized members only those were celibate), there was no sign of an organized 'spiritual elite' inside the church apart from groups of widows and virgins.  On the fringes of mainstream Christianity, for example among Jewish-Christians groups, Marcionites, and Montanists, asceticism was very popular, often in the form of 'encratism' (Greek for 'self-control').  Encratites rejected marriage, wine, and meat.  Clement of Alexandria and Origen laid the foundations for an orthodox theology of asceticism.

THE FIRST MONKS

Icon of Saint Anthony the Great, the founder of Christian monasticism

Monks replace martyrs as the spiritual elite

Frescos at the Syrian Monastery, Scetes, Egypt

The late third and early fourth centuries saw the beginnings of monastic asceticism in Christianity.  General toleration of Christianity even before Constantine produced an influx of new members into the churches and growth in numbers was accompanied by a lowering of standards.  At the same time martyrdom became less and less frequent, and the martyrs and confessors were replaced as the spiritual elite by the first monks.  The monks aimed to live the Christian life to the full, and felt that continued residence in the 'world' hindered this.  They tried to achieve a pure Christianity and a deep communion with God which they considered unattainable in the existing churches.

Saint Catherine in Egypt's southern Sinai Peninsula, on a snowy winter morning.

There is considerable debate as to where monasticism began.  The first monks were individuals who retreated to the desert in Egypt or Syria.  Sometimes these retreats were only temporary, and may have been prompted by the need to flee persecution; often they became permanent.  Although he may not have been the earliest, Antony (about 256-356), a Coptic peasant from Egypt, was the first famous hermit.  His example was followed by others, and soon there were many hermits, living either singly or in loosely-associated groups on the edge of the desert.

The hermit

St. Jerome, who lived as a hermit near Bethlehem, depicted in his study being visited by two angels (Cavarozzi, early 17th century).

The main routine of the hermit was prayer and meditation, supplemented by reading of the Bible.  Fasting was also important, and they attempted many other rigorous feats such as standing for hours while praying.  Some of the prayers were rather mechanical, involving the repetition of short set formulas.

Loneliness and shortage of food

Solitude, Jean Jacques Henner

The prolonged loneliness and the shortage of food and sleep fostered hallucinations as well as growth in spiritual awareness of God.  Conflicts with demons were frequent.  Many of the visions, trances, and strange experiences of the desert hermits have obvious psychological explanations (for example, the appearance of the devil as a seductive woman could be the result of repressed sexual feelings).  Those who retreated to the desert inevitably abandoned family life, and celibacy was the rule, although some married couples retreated together into the desert, but lived without sexual intercourse.  Most hermits remained fairly stationary, but there were some wanderers, especially in the regions of Syria, including more extreme groups such as the unruly Messalians who wandered about, sleeping rough and keeping up a continual chanting.

Going to extremes

A copy by the young Michelangelo after an engraving by Martin Schongauer around 1487–9, The Torment of Saint Anthony. Oil and tempera on panel. One of many artistic depictions of Saint Anthony's trials in the desert

Some hermits went to unnatural extremes, such as living at the top of pillars, or walling themselves up in caves.  Early hermits were largely lay people.  Occasionally they might meet to receive the Eucharist, or a priest who was a hermit would minister to a group throughout an area.  But the Eucharist had little place in the routines of the early hermits.

PACHOMIUS STARTS A COMMUNITY

Pachomius the Great, Father of Spiritual Communal Monastic Life

Pachomius founds communal monasticism

Painting of Pachomius the Great in the Curtea Veche, Bucharest.

Communal monasticism was begun about 320 by Pachomius.  He was a converted solider, and after discharge he spent some time as a hermit before setting up his first ascetic community at Tabennisi, by the River Nile in Egypt.  The rule of his community survives in a Latin translation made by Jerome.

Life at the monastery

The Monastery of Saint Anthony in Egypt, built over the tomb of Saint Anthony, the "Father of Christian Monasticism".

Pachomius set his face against extremism.  He insisted on regular meals and worship, and aimed to make his communities self-supporting through such industries as the weaving of palm-mats or growing fruit and vegetables for sale.  Entrants to his community had to hand over their personal wealth to a common fund, and were only admitted as full members after a period of probation.  To prove their initial earnestness they were required to stand outside the monastery door for several days.  Part of the qualifications for full membership was to memorize parts of the Bible; and if the candidates were illiterate they were taught how to read and write.  Although Pachomius' first communities were for me, before his death he supervised the establishment of the earliest communities for women as well.  Pachomius created the basic framework which was followed by all later monastic communities.

Athanasius brings monasticism to the West

Icon of St Athanasius

Monasticism appeared first out of Eastern Christianity.  It was first brought to the notice of the Western Churches by Athanasius.  While he was in exile in the West between 340 and 346, he was accompanied by two Egyptian monks.  Athanasius spent parts of his later exiles hiding among the hermits of the Egyptian desert, and subsequently wrote the life of Antony.  This biography provides almost all our knowledge about Antony, and largely helped to spread the ideals of the ascetic movement.  It was soon translated into Latin, and among those influenced by it was Augustine of Hippo.  In the West monasticism had the backing of church leaders such as Ambrose from the very beginning.

Source: Smith, Michael A. "Chapter 15: Ascetics and Monks." In Introduction to the History of Christianity. Second Edition, ed. Tim Dowley, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013, pages 169-171.

John Newton (1725-1807) reproves those involved in contraband, smuggling and income tax evasion in 18th century England.

A word to professors in trade

A skirmish with smugglers from Finland at the Russian border, 1853. A painting by Vasily Hudiakov.

Christians in the late 18th century are engaging in smuggling to avoid taxes

A book with a concealed space for hiding cigarettes.

It is suspected (or, rather, it is too certainly known), that, among those who are deemed Gospel professors, there are some people who allow themselves in the practice of dealing in prohibited, smuggled goods, to the injury of the public revenue, and the detriment of the fair trader.

Jesus says, "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Egyptian peasants seized for non-payment of taxes. (Pyramid Age)

The decisions of the word of God, upon this point, are so plain and determinate, that it is rather difficult to conceive how a sincere mind can either overlook or mistake them. The same authority which forbids us to commit adultery or murder, requires us to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." "Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue." These precepts enjoin no more than what the common sense of mankind pronounces to be due, from subjects and members of society, to the governments they live under, and by which they are protected. But the obligation is greatly enforced upon those who acknowledge themselves the disciples of Christ, since he has been pleased to make their compliance herein a part of the obedience they owe to himself. And it is plain, that these injunctions are universal and binding, under all civil governments, as such; for none can justly suppose, that tributes exacted by the Roman emperors (under whose dominion the first Christians lived), such as Tiberius or Nero, had the sanction of our Lord and his apostles on account of their peculiar equity.

Honest businesses suffer because they have to raise their prices to pay for taxes so you shouldn't buy smuggled goods as this represents fraud and perjury

Poster issued by the British tax authorities to counter offshore tax evasion.

The vending of smuggled goods, or the buying them, if known to be so, is likewise injurious to the fair trader, who, conscientiously paying the prescribed taxes, cannot afford to sell so cheap as the smuggler, and therefore must expect the fewer customers. In this view, it offends the royal law of "doing to others as we desire that they should do unto us." The force of this argument may be easily felt, by anyone who will honestly make the case his own. Without any fancy reasoning, people may know in a moment that they would not like to be put to this disadvantage. It is therefore unjust (that is sinful, and utterly unfitting a professor of religion) to purchase smuggled goods, even in small quantities, and for family use. As for those who, being in trade themselves, make this practice a branch of their business, and, under the semblance of a fair reputation, are doing things in secret which they would tremble to have discovered, being afraid of the tax collector, though not of God; I can only pray, that God may give them repentance: for it is a work of darkness, and needs it. Transactions of this kind cannot be carried on for a course of time, without such a series and complication of fraud and baseness, and for the most part of perjury likewise, as would be scandalous, not only in a professed Christian, but in an avowed infidel.

Smugglers fight, murder, waste their money, and stupefy their consciences and you encourage them by buying their goods

X-ray of an abdomen piled up with cocaine

It should be observed likewise, that there is hardly any set of men more lost to society, or in a situation more dangerous to themselves and others, than the people who are called smugglers. Frequent fighting, and sometimes murder itself, are the consequence of their illicit commerce. Their money is ill gotten, and it is generally ill spent. They are greatly to be pitied. The employment they are accustomed to, has a direct tendency to deprive them of character and the privileges of social life, and to harden their hearts and stupefy their consciences in the ways of sin. But for whom are they risking their lives and ruining their souls? I would hope, Reader, not for you, if you account yourself a Christian. If you, for the sake of gain, encourage and assist them, by buying or selling their goods, you are so far responsible for the consequences: you encourage them in sin; you expose them to mischief. And have you so learned Christ? Is this the testimony you give of the uprightness of your hearts and ways? Is it thus you show your compassion for the souls of men? Ah! shake your hands from gain so dearly earned. Think not to support the cause of God with such gain; he hates robbery for burnt-offering. Think it not lawful, or safe, to put a farthing of it into your treasury, lest it secretly communicate a moth and a curse to all that you possess: for it is the price of blood, the blood of souls. If you are indeed a child of God, and will persist in this path after admonition received, be assured your sin will find you out. If the Lord loves you, he will not allow you to prosper in your perverseness. You may rather expect, that, as a little rotted corn is sufficient to spoil the whole heap to which it is laid, so money thus obtained will deprive you of the blessing and comfort you might otherwise expect from your lawful acquisitions.

Dealing in smuggled goods is in opposition to Scripture, law, equity, humanity, and Christian conscience

A poster warning the German women and girls about the danger of human traffic in the USA (ca 1900)

If you are determined to persist, in opposition to Scripture, to law, to equity and humanity, you have doubtless, as I suppose you a professor, some plea or excuse with which you attempt to justify yourself, and to keep your conscience quiet. See to it, that it be such a one as will bear the examination of a dying hour. You will not surely plead, that "things are come to such a pass, there is no carrying on business upon other terms to advantage!" Will the practice of the world, who know not Christ, be a proper precedent for you, who call yourself by his name? That cannot be, since his command is, "You shall not follow a multitude to do evil." That the truth and power of his grace may be manifested, he is pleased to put his servants into such situations, that they must forego some seeming advantages, and suffer some seeming hardships, in their worldly connections, if they will approve themselves faithful to him, and live in the exercise of a good conscience. He promises that his grace shall be sufficient for them. It is the blessing of the Lord which makes rich; and for lack of this we see many rise early, take late rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, to no purpose. And I believe, integrity and diligence in business, with a humble dependence upon his Providence, are the best methods of thriving even in temporals. However, those who lose for him are in no danger of losing by him. They may be confident of so much as he sees best for them; and they shall have his peace and blessing with it. But if, when you are placed in a state of trial, the love of the world is so powerful in your heart that you cannot resist the temptation of enriching yourself by unlawful means, you have great reason to fear you have not his Spirit, and are therefore none of his.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The tax collector's office, 1640

Source: Newton, John. The Works of the Rev. John Newton. Volume I, London: J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-yard and J. Smith, No 6, Coleman-Street-Buildings, 1808, Letter XL, pages 378-381.