I have one question more to suggest with reference to the duty of an unbeliever towards us as Christians, and it is this, Why should he disturb our faith, or, as he might term it, our superstition?  If he retorts by asking why we should disturb his unbelief, our answer is ready—­because we wish with our whole soul to share with him the blessings which God our common Father has for him as well as for us; because we truly lament the loss to our brother who refuses the eternal good which he may now enjoy with the whole family of God; because we love our God, and his God and Saviour, and desire our brother to know and to love them too; because it is so unjust, so selfish, so hateful, not to love and obey such a glorious Person as Jesus Christ, who knows us, loves us, and has died to gain our hearts!  These are some of the reasons, rudely and roughly stated, why we desire, with all our heart, that every man should believe in Jesus Christ.  But if any man, for any reason which may be beyond our understanding or sympathy, desires to destroy this faith in all that is most precious to us, then I ask, not in Christ’s name,—­for it is unnecessary to appeal to Him,—­but in the name of common sense and common philanthropy, why he should not only labour to do this, but to do it without apparently any apprehension of the untold misery which he must occasion if he succeeds in his attempt?  Do not tell us, with a boast, that “the truth must be spoken, come what may!” Be it so; but surely the kind of truth which must be spoken must ever regulate the manner in which it is spoken?  Again, I bid you picture to yourselves a person entering a family whose members were rejoicing in the thought of a father’s return, and announcing the intelligence of that father’s death, with a smile of pity or a sneer of contempt at their ignorant happiness!  Imagine such a one professing to be actuated by a mere love of truth!  Oh! if the terrible duty has been laid upon any one with a human heart, of announcing to others intelligence which, if true, must leave a blank to them in the world that can never be filled up, what tender sympathy, what genuine sorrow becomes him who breaks the heavy tidings!  And such ought to be the feelings of every man who, from whatever cause, feels called upon to announce that the Christian religion is false.  If he must make known that terrible fact to believers in Jesus; if he must tell them that the supposed Source of all their life and joy has no existence, and that their faith in Him is vain, let this be done with the solemnity and the sorrow which a true brotherly sympathy would necessarily dictate.  If the missionaries of Christianity are warranted in preaching their gospel with joy, the missionaries of an infidelity which professes only to destroy and not to build up, should go forth on their dreadful vocation with the feeling of martyrs, and with no other notes of triumph than sounds of lamentation and woe!  For if Christianity is false, we are “yet in our sins, all who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, and we are of all men most miserable!”