"I do not imagine, or expect, that I can win over, at once, to Christianity, the minds of sceptical workingmen, who may be listening to me.
I know too well, by personal experience, how hard it is to part with sceptical convictions—how difficult it is to bring a mind, which has become strongly warped in the direction of unbelief, to enter upon a determined, steady, and persevering consideration of the Christian Evidences. And without this—without an earnest and devoted study of Christian Evidences—no thinking skeptic (for I am not addressing vulgar scoffers) can ever become a real Christian.
"I seek no flighty converts from your ranks—no sudden passing over to our side from yours, of some hot, excitable partisan, who is incapable of thinking. I seek to lead you to accept what I believe to be Truth, by inducing you to practise the daily reflection, the steady conning over and over again of each item of the Christian Evidences, which effectually cured my doubts, and rendered me a settled and grateful believer. I would not lift up my finger, or stir a straw, to make a sudden and spasmodic conversion of any one of you, which would leave you helpless in your new belief, and incapable of giving a reason of the hope within you. Such a convert would be a very useless one. I want to enlist real soldiers for my Master."
—Thomas Cooper
The Verity of Christ’s Resurrection from the Dead (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1875), pp. 131-32.
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