It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor
friends, nor even that their short enjoyment of the Word of
life was hindered and interrupted; above this and worse than
this was the sense of _wrong_, done to these helpless people,
and done by my own father and mother. This sense was something
too bitter for a child of my years to bear; it crushed me for
a time. Our people had a right to the Bible, as great as mine;
a right to dispose of themselves, as true as my father's right
to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as
well as for me; and here was my father, — _my father_ —
practically saying that they should not hear of it, nor know
the message He had sent to them. And if anything could have
made this more bitter to me, it was the consciousness that the
reason of it all was that we might profit by it. Those unpaid
hands wrought that our hands might be free to do nothing;
those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses might
be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept
unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be
poured into our treasury.
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