While in Paris, we spoke twice in the Town Hall to respectable audiences, and three nights afterwards at the Congregational Temple by the favor of one of its trustees. On one occasion, we spoke on The Apostacy which, of course, brought us into direct collision with “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of all the Abominations of the Earth.” Some of the Pope’s children being present, they very naturally felt aggrieved; so that next day we heard rumors of great wrath on their part against us. They are said to be quite numerous in Paris, and not very peaceably disposed.
In Canada, their “ecclesiastical dignitaries,” says The Star “have left the arena of spiritual contests, and entered the political. They have attacked our institutions, intrigued with our public men, and threatened our political rights. They have thus made themselves public property, and laid their actions open to the criticism of public journalists. Neither cope, crozier, nor mitre will protect the man from the shafts of truth and justice wherever a free press exists, if he trenches upon the privileges of the people. Our whole political system is now deranged by priestly interference, and we cannot, dare not be silent.”
To the sons of freedom these semi-pagan ecclesiastics and their tail have no answer but threats of violence and brute force. We were informed that they threatened to throw the editor of the Star from the railway bridge into the Grand River. They did not, however, execute their threat upon his person, though they did upon his types, which they hurled into the stream. They were reported to have threatened us with a similar defence of their diabolism; but their rage was restrained, and we finished our testimony in Paris to the torment of some, but without dismay or damage to the outward man. Many who heard, did so, we were told, with much earnestness, watching us closely to lay hold upon our words—but without result; for they confessed that we kept so close to Scripture that they had not been able to succeed.
The following notice of our lectures appeared in the Paris Star of July 30, 1856:
Dr. Thomas delivered to a highly attentive audience, in the Congregational church, the last of his course of lectures upon ‘The Kingdom of God.’ Although differing radically in his conceptions of religious matters from the popular theology of the day, he was able to retain the interest of the majority of his hearers throughout the entire course. A wrong impression has been made upon the public mind, through the medium of a leading journal (The Toronto Globe), which, by the way, refused to insert a reply to a very one-sided article which appeared in its columns, that Dr. Thomas’s lectures are subversive of the great truths taught in the Holy Scriptures. Subversive of errors, the fruit of the great apostacy, indeed they may be; but subversive of the truth no arguments can be which are logical deductions from the writings of Moses and the prophets, Jesus and the apostles.
The Doctor professed to give an outline of the religion taught in the Bible, and in doing so he showed that the coming of the Lord was the grand object of hope among the first Christians. That the Great Salvation which began to be preached by the Lord in Galilee, in the largest sense of the term, is the deliverance of the human race from sin and its consequences, so that there shall be on earth no more death, neither sorrow nor lamentation, nor any more curse nor pain.
In a more limited sense it is the deliverance of the Twelve Tribes of Israel from their subjection to the Gentiles, and the consequent establishment of them as a powerful and independent nation in the Holy Land, called the Kingdom of God, and the contemporary deliverance of all other nations from the tyranny of the cruel, infidel, and profligate governments that now oppress them; so that being subdued by their conquerors, and enlightened, they might all be ‘Blessed in Abraham and his seed.’
In a still more restricted sense, it is the deliverance of individual Jews and Gentiles who believe the promises of God, set forth in the prophets and in the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, from their past sins, through the name of Jesus, and from the grave to the possession of glory, honor, incorruptibility and life in the aforesaid Kingdom of God.
The lectures were delivered with an earnestness which left no doubt upon the minds of the audience that he was speaking what he considered most important truth. His style is easy, clear, chaste and elegant, but more calculated to convince the understanding than to tickle the ear.