Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 66

1850.

Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.

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their houses without daring, or perhaps (what is still worse) wishing to emerge from such low and brutish degradation. Much as there has been in the year 1848 to mourn in the atrocities committed in Christian Europe during the late riotous revolutions, they are virtue itself com- pared with the systematic massacre of the humanity, not to say the feel- ings of a whole nation. Despotism like that here gives no hope of improvement. It feeds greedily on destruction, and can not cease from devouring every rival existence, knowing it lives only by the death of others. It has one will, and none besides must have any will. In Lew- chew it has triumphed, and Oh, what a dark triumph it is! The triumph of death over the grave of its slain, the shout of madness over dethroned reason, the echo of Satan's Bravo! when the world sank with a crash into the tomb of sin.

“What shall I do unto thee, Ephraim ?”—what shall I do unto thee, Lewchew? Thus I asked myself with the prophet, when in the ex- treme of my perplexity. I well knew nothing but the gospel of the living God could remedy, or even reach such a case. But how should I be- gin to go to work? Faith cometh by hearing, but how shall they hear, when thus driven beyond the reach of the joyful sound? When my aggravated sins shall be remembered at the judgment-seat of Christ, then remember me, oh, my God! for good, and pass not by the days and nights I spent between the dead walls of these streets, stretching out my hands to this strange people, and lifting up my voice if possibly it might pierce through to, the immured captives, and convince them that a Christian heart is not soon done out of sympathy; and that I loved and desired their salvation, though I saw them not. Rolls of portions of Scripture and of tracts in the Chinese, and addresses written in the Lewchewan-copies of which my good wife busily helped me to mul- tiply during late night hours—were the only missiles I threw into the besieged courts; but alas, what I strewed with difficulty and hazard for many months, was easily gathered by the vigilant enemy, and brought back to me, a large trunkful, by government emissaries. My chief pulpit, the great market of Napa, where I knew they could not long go on driving off buyer and seller, and where my charities to a few cripples waiting there for alms, had evidently made a good impression on the multitude, was certainly not forsaken; but no sooner did a man or woman look up to the speaker, than a hint, a yell, or a pull from somewhere, was sure to sink the daring eye to the ground. These vex- ations finally quenched every attempt of the people to hear me.

In March, 1848, perhaps in consequence of a large ship approach- ing the shore very closely, some faint sigus of a reconciliation appeared.

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