THE VALUE OF A MAN.
Let me give you a passage from H. L. Hastings: “A friend of mine visited the Fiji Islands in 1844, and what do you suppose an infidel was worth there then? You could buy a man for a musket, or if you paid money, for seven dollars, and after you had bought him you could feed him, starve him, work him, whip him, or eat him—they generally ate them, unless they were so full of tobacco they could not stomach them! But if you go there to-day you could not buy a man for seven million dollars. There are no men for sale there now. What has made the difference in the price of humanity? The twelve hundred Christian chapels scattered over that Island tell the story. The people have learned to read that Book which says: ‘Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ’; and since they learned that lesson, no man is for sale there.”
Men tell me that the world is getting so much better. We talk of our American civilization. We forget the alarming increase of crime in our midst. It is said that there is no civilized country on the globe where murder is so frequently committed and so seldom punished.