< What is the Intelligence? (continued from page 5-60) >
vation, simply because they are without the pale of the Church of Christ. Setting these aside as lost, we have still left 350.000.000 professing Christians of one kind or another—observe, however, that the idolaters amount to at least three times this number. But, to be orthodox in our estimate, we must still further reduce the numbers of those likely to be saved,—first, by all the Roman Catholics, of whom there, are 182,422,532; also the Greek Church, amounting to 74,614.300—the two latter amounting in all to 257,046,832. This leaves us only the Protest ant churches, the united members of which only amount to 99.755,534. being not much more than a third of the whole Christian Church. Shall we then stop here, and take our 95,755.534 Protestants as the number of those for whom salvation is possible? No, says our theology; you must deduct from these, at least, the Unitarians, 183,000; the Mormons, of whom there are 100.902; the Swedenborgians, 12.000: and some would even include the Universalists, amounting to 656,000, thus reducing the Protestants to 94,803,632. But we must remember that these figures embrace a great variety of sects and de nominations, as the Lutherans, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Moravians, Adventists, and others of less note, in each of which it is only the advanced minds that will admit the possibility of salvation out of their own communion. And were it possible to ascertain the precise number of those who are really the followers of Christ, perhaps our total would dwindle down from millions to as many thousands.
Surely these facts require no comment. No thinking mind could possibly admit that such a manifest failure of the whole scheme of creation is possible, and when we know from actual testimony that such a person and place as the orthodox devil and hell does not exist in the afterlife, we may well banish such God degrading and demoralizing doctrines as these, which have, like a hideous nightmare, burdened Immunity too long.
The Prince of Wales Among the Indian Jugglers
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Editor's notes
- ↑ The Prince of Wales Among the Indian Jugglers by unknown author. From The Times, December 28