Re: Above Black

[Credibility]

it is to be feared that henceforth the practice of
infanticide will extremely increase beyond what it ever was. The
heinousness of the violation of the great Creator's benevolence,
which constitutes infanticide, is beyond comparison with the
indulgence granted to the system of buying and selling children to
prolong their existence."

As though these benevolent persons only bought slaves for this one
laudable purpose, to preserve their lives! "As regards the buyers,
they look upon themselves as affording relief to distressed people,
and consider the matter as an act akin to charity," etc.

A flood of light is let in upon the matter of the reluctance of
British officials to move in the putting down of domestic slavery and
the buying and selling of boys among the natives, in the following
well-deserved thrust at the weak point in the armor of the British
officials:

"The office of the Registrar-General was charged with the
superintendence of prostitutes and the licensing of brothels
and similar affairs. But _from 80 to 90 per cent of all these
prostitutes in Hong Kong were brought into these brothels by
purchase, as is well known to everybody_. If buying and selling is
a matter of a criminal character, the proper thing would be, first
of all, to abolish this evil (brothel slavery). But how comes
it that since the first establishment of the Colony down to the
present day the same old practice prevails in these licensed
brothels, and has never been forbidden or abolished?"

This was a center shot, and calculated to weaken the hands of at
least the guilty officials. What co

[Credibility]

it seems to be very discernible when the very time was; but others are
more at a loss. In this respect, there are very many who do not know,
even when they have it, that it is the grace of conversion, and
sometimes do not think it to be so till a long time after. Many, even
when they come to entertain great hopes that they are converted, if they
remember what they experienced in the first exercises of grace, they are
at a loss whether it was any more than a common illumination; or whether
some other more clear and remarkable experience which they had
afterwards, was not the first of a saving nature. The manner of God's
work on the soul, sometimes especially, is very mysterious; and it is
with the kingdom of God as to its manifestation in the heart of a
convert, as is said, Mark iv. 26, 27,28, "So is the kingdom of God, as
if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise
night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not
how; for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade,
then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."

In some, converting light is like a glo