If any are at a loss how to account for the imbecility of this government as thus far manifested in its so-called efforts to put down the rebellion, they cannot fail to learn the reason from the statements given below. Slavery is the cause of the present war, and consequently no efforts can be effective which do not embrace within their purposes the removal of this diabolical iniquity; and yet slavery is persistently ignored on the part of the government as having no bearing on the settlement of this controversy.
It is coming to be widely admitted all over the North that God has a controversy with this nation on account of the sin of slavery; and that the North is now receiving chastisement at his hands for its complicity with this great evil. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this admission is clearly this: That until the North shall cleanse its hands from all the stains of this sin, and take a bold stand of uncompromising opposition to its very existence, and seize upon every opportunity to abolish and crush it out, God cannot make bare his arm nor manifest his power to aid them in the struggle. And what are the facts in the case? On the part of those engaged in defending the cause of the North, slavery seems to be the only thing, as well expressed below, that is regarded as inviolably sacred. That must not be touched at the peril of life. And even now the oppressed bondman who succeeds in escaping from the hell of slavery and reaching the Federal lines, is in some instances relentlessly returned by the union forces, under the sanction of the administration, to his traitorous and rebellious master. If the government, as if not satisfied with the depth of corruption and sin to which it has already sunk, should determine to perpetuate deeds of darkness which were sure to call down upon it the heaviest thunderbolts of Jehovah's wrath, could it take a more effective course than this in which to do it? And while this course is continued, what can be expected but disasters, defeat, and disgrace? And will not the judgment of every upright mind in the land acquiesce in the sentence? Read the following from the N. Y. Independent:
SACREDNESS OF SLAVERY.
"In every compromise upon the subject of slavery, and in all legislation to conciliate the South, property in slaves has been regarded as peculiarly sacred. This tradition still holds good at Washington. If we may credit the following, the Administration, acting through its military officers, entertains the idea that slavery is too holy to be touched, even for the purpose of saving the country:
"A slave belonging to Jeff. Offord, a secessionist of Spencer county, made his escape and delivered himself up at Camp Sherman on our fair grounds. The officers of the camp handed him over to Mr. Dent, our Provost-Marshal, who, under instructions from Gen. Sherman, returned him without reward to his owner."—Louisville Journal.
"If the son of a rebel had escaped, and desired to join our army, how gladly would he have been received! If the horse of a rebel had come within our lines, how quickly he would have been seized and used for our purposes! But the slave is not treated either as a person or as property. The vilest institution upon which the sun ever shone, the primal cause of the rebellion, and the one great iniquity for which God is now dealing with the nation, is treated by the Administration as if it were the only really sacred thing in the land—not to be touched but on pain of death! Is it any wonder that we are defeated in our plans, and that our hosts stand still as if paralyzed by some invisible power?"
The readers of the Review will recognize in the above the fulfillment of a prophecy that relates to the present time. The closing sentence of the extract is worthy of double emphasis: "Is it any wonder that we are defeated in our plans, and that our hosts stand still as if paralyzed by some invisible power?"
But the people are astonished and perplexed at the present state of things. The feelings by which they are beginning to be agitated are well expressed in the following:
THE LESSONS OF THE LAST WEEK.
"The sad disaster to our troops at Edwards' Ferry, the closing of the Potomac by the rebels, and the continued inaction of the national army of the Potomac, are provoking the indignant protest of the press and the people against military blunderers and managing civilians. The Washington correspondent of The Watchman and Reflector thus comments upon the latter:
"The people are staggered; they hear that the Cabinet is divided, that the magnificent army which they have equipped is to remain inactive till winter forces them to retirement, in order that opportunity may be afforded for moral suasion and diplomatic negotiation. Is this true? Are these things possible? Yet such are the reports in private circles and on change. If they are true, then the Administration are divorcing themselves, mensa et toro, from the people. They have no confidence in moral suasion or negotiations. They believe in artillery, musketry, and cavalry, as the only means of re-establishing the power of the government over the seceding States. They will not submit to the army retiring to winter quarters without trying to do something more than threaten the lines of the enemy, unless the gravest military reasons exist for such an act. If so, they will acquiesce in the painful necessity. But if it is for state reasons, then they protest against the policy as ruinous, suicidal, and cowardly.
"If President Lincoln has not a Cabinet who are a unit on the resolution to maintain the Government and restore its authority by force of arms, then the people of the United States expect him to form a Cabinet on such a basis. They will pardon mistakes of judgment, but not of principle. They have enough of forbearance, enough of diplomacy, enough, yea, ad nauseam, of compromise, and now they want firm, stern, direct fighting. If the Administration think that we of the North and West, with our twenty millions, cannot, by fighting, establish the power of the Government in the rebel States, with only twelve millions, then let it frankly say so and resign, and thus give place to men who believe in the contrary, and are willing to try the force of arms.
"Nothing has given more sorrow to the people of the North than the reports of difference of opinion between Gen. McClellan and certain members of the Cabinet as to the propriety of an advance at this time. They have no confidence in the military ability of the Cabinet; that was destroyed at Bull Run. They have all confidence in the youthful McClellan. They may be disappointed, but they are willing to risk an army such as the world has seldom seen on his judgment, and they demand for him responsibility, a fair chance, a free field, and no interference by civilians."
We cannot forbear presenting another extract on this subject. It is somewhat lengthy, but it will repay perusal, as it shows the view that people of other countries take of our national affairs, and the just estimate they put upon the object for which this government is avowedly contending. And it seems to us that a sober consideration of this point is as well calculated to cool the ardor of the lovers of liberty in the North, as it is that of the "Christian Philanthropists of England," in the cause that now agitates this nation. We find the testimony in the Oberlin Evangelist, as follows:
WHAT THE CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPISTS OF ENGLAND THINK OF US.
"Rev. T. Goadby represents a large class of English Baptists. . . . He says:
" 'God has rent asunder your Federation because of your idolatry—your idolatry of the Union and the dollar, and your sacrifice of freedom and the poor African to these gods, as if they were the gods which brought you up out of the Egypt of British bondage. Here I see the hand of God.' "
THE NORTH RESPONSIBLE FOR SLAVERY—COMPROMISES AND UNION WORSHIP.
"Tell me not that you in the North are innocent. Are you not responsible for the sins of the government about which your boast is that it springs from the people, and rests on their sovereign will as its sure and only foundation? Have you nothing to do with slavery in the District of Columbia? Has not the 'Union' been your idol? Have not your great men bowed down before it? The noble and world-honored founders of the Republic unhappily set you the example. They compromised principle for the 'Union' when they gave to Negroes representation as persons only through their masters who held them as goods and chattels; and they compromised again when, omitting the word 'slave' in the clause, they yet laid in the Constitution the foundation for a fugitive slave law, an enactment at variance both with the precepts of God's Word and rights of humanity. Before this idol a long line of Presidents have bowed down, and mighty men like Daniel Webster, who aspired to the Presidency. Before this idol, Seward, the once uncompromising and eloquent champion of freedom, fell down, when, in the Senate, he virtually urged the South to stay in the Union for the security of their own peculiar institution; and when he said, as he did at the outbreak of the revolt, that all efforts must now be turned to 'save the Union,' as freedom was always in the Union. At that same shrine President Lincoln pays homage in his inaugural address, and repeats that homage in his special message. As one reads his elevation of the Union above independence and above American liberty, one cannot but ask—'What, is not righteousness older than any union? Is not God's charter of liberty for every son of man, of whatsoever clime or color, older and more sacred than any human political confederation under the sun?'
"When Mrs. Stowe chides the English philanthropists for their lack of enthusiasm in our struggle for freedom, Mr. G. replies:
" 'The South, in her infatuation, is doing all she can to destroy slavery by withdrawing it from under the powerful ægis of the Union; and all that your politicians, all that your brave soldiers in the North at present propose to do, is to sustain the Government and "save the Union." Knowing what that Union is—union with slaveholders, and compromise with slavery, we cannot for the life of us be enthusiastic in its behalf. It exerts no irresistible spell over us as with you, calling up memories of patriotic battle-fields, and the heroic era of your country. We admire it, and respect it, in its political bearings, as the legacy of great and good men to mankind, but we don't believe free government would perish with it, or with the dissolution of any other political union under heaven; and we have such strong faith in God, and such firm confidence in the Anglo-Saxon race, that we believe the freemen of America could, to-day, construct another Union even more glorious than this, because without any stain of slavery upon it, and construct it with less difficulty than the fathers of your Republic encountered.
" 'I repeat, then, that we in England are as true as ever to the cause of freedom, and as ready as ever to make sacrifices for it; and that we, as much as ever, love and sympathize with our brethren in America, brethren as we are in language and common descent, in faith and common destiny. But in the preservation of your Union with slaveholders, in the uprising of a great and free people against a confederacy of slaveholders without a definite policy of emancipation, in the lavish expenditure of blood and treasure for a political confederation which has fostered slavery for more than half a century, which would find means to foster it again, and, at all events, would give its strength as a confederation, as it has given it before, for the protection and security of slavery where189it already exists, we do not see the cause of freedom pure and simple, and we cannot discover occasion for enthusiastic demonstrations of applause. We do see, however, reason for hope and prayer. No doubt God, in his providence, will, if you persist in it, overrule even the bloody struggle for good; and from thousands of Christian hearts in England prayers go up to heaven that He may so interpose.
" 'In the war as now conducted, we can discover no direct and unmistakable effort to purge the Union—no definite anti-slavery struggle. It is the old "Union" that you are seeking to maintain, and the position of things which the ballot-box of November introduced, that professedly you are aiming to restore. That this is all at present contemplated—even if the fatal mistake of civil war first, and then conciliation and compromise afterward, is not committed—facts and words sufficiently show. The slaves that escape into the Federal camp are not liberated; the slaves in the District of Columbia are not set free; there is not a word about the poor African in the message, nor as yet, in the first debates in the new Congress. The once "everlasting" Negro is thrown overboard.
" 'Nevertheless should events, under the all-controlling hand of Heaven, receive a new impulse, and take a new direction; should you see it practicable to commit yourselves openly before the world, not merely to the "Union" in all its integrity, and the non-extension of slavery, but to a well-considered policy of emancipation, as may God grant you may; should Secretary Seward, with the President, and Congress, and the people to back him, come forward in 1861, as he did in 1850, and boldly say—"I think it wrong to hold men in bondage at any time, and under any circumstances, I think it right and just, therefore, to abolish slavery when we have the power at any time, at all times, under any circumstances." "For the performance of such a duty, the first time and the first occasion which offers is the right one;"—should you with no uncertain voice, in no equivocal terms, "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants hereof;" instead of ringing the old cracked bell of the "Union;" then, letters, speeches, resolutions at crowded public meetings, expressive of fervent sympathy, would pour in upon you thick and fast; then, "with a gigantic throb athwart the sea," you would feel our hearts beating strong and high in union with yours; then would rise up, not from England only, but from the whole civilized world, the shout of a great multitude, "as the voice of many waters, and of mighty thunderings," bidding you a hearty and enthusiastic God speed in your work.
'I am sincerely yours,
'THOMAS GOADBY.'
These are sound words and faithful. History will take them up as her verdict on the present war.
The American leaders seem to be seized with infatuation on the subject of slavery, the "primal cause" of this disastrous war; and an imbecility, as unaccountable as it is aggravating, to the masses in the North, has been the characteristic of most of the movements thus far in behalf of the Union. The student of prophecy alone reads and understands the present state of things. He sees that when God is chastising a nation for a particular iniquity, he cannot put forth his hand to build up that nation, so long as it is morally certain that the power thus restored, would only be exerted to foster the very iniquity which called down His displeasure; and he reads further the unequivocal declaration of the prophet that the winds shall be held till the servants of God are sealed. Rev. vii, 1-3.
SCRIPTURE ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD, VINDICATED.
(Concluded.)
OBJECTION 1. The ark (Gen. vi, 15, 16), could not contain all the animals which are said to have entered it, together with the proper provisions for them during the time of the deluge.
ANSWER. On accurate computation, the contrary has been proved; so that what was thought an objection becomes even an evidence for the truth of the Mosaic history. The dimensions of the ark were three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and thirty in height; and it consisted of three stories or floors. Reckoning the cubit at eighteen inches, Dr. Hales proves the ark to have been of the burthen of 42,413 tons. "A first-rate man-of-war is between 2200 and 2300 tons: and, consequently, the ark had the capacity to stowage of eighteen of such ships, the largest in present use, and might carry 20,000 men, with provision for six months, besides the weight of 1800 cannons, and of all military stores. Can we doubt of its being sufficient to contain eight persons, and about two-hundred or two hundred and fifty pair of four-footed animals; a number to which, according to M. Buffon, all the various distinct species may be reduced, together with all the subsistence necessary for a twelve month?" To these are to be added all the fowls of the air, and such reptiles and insects as cannot live under water. Other calculations have been made, to show that the ark was of sufficient capacity for all the purposes for which it was designed; but as they are larger than that above given, they are here designedly omitted.
OBJ. 2. As the same causes must always produce the same effects, it is objected as an absurdity in the Mosaic history (Gen. ix, 13), to speak of the rainbow as formed after the flood, and as the sign of a covenant then made; because, as that phenomenon results from the immutable laws of refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in drops of falling rain, it is certain that the rainbow must have been occasionally exhibited from the beginning of the world.
ANS. But the original does not say that God set the rainbow in the cloud. The word translated, I do set my bow in the cloud, may be (as indeed it ought to be) rendered, with great propriety, I do appoint my bow in the cloud, to be a sign or token of the covenant between me and the earth; and a fit sign it certainly was, because the patriarch knew that there never was, nor ever can be, a rainbow, but when there is sunshine as well as rain. "What purpose then was served by the rainbow? The very best purpose so well expressed by the sacred historian, when he represents God as saying, This is the token of the covenant which I will make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations; for natural and inanimate objects—such as pillars and heaps of stones—were considered as tokens, and even a kind of witnesses in the contracts of all the civilized nations of remote antiquity. Of this we have several instances in the books of the Old Testament, but surely not one so apposite as that of the rainbow. Noah and his sons undoubtedly knew—either by the science of the antediluvian world, or by the immediate teaching of God—that the rainbow is a physical proof, as long as it is seen, that a general deluge is not to be dreaded; and therefore if their minds, filled with terror and astonishment at what they had escaped should ever have become fearfully apprehensive of a future deluge, the sight of the bow would immediately dissipate their fears. The science of Noah and his sons, which taught them the physical connection of the sign and the thing signified, was soon lost, with other truths of greater importance, when their descendants were scattered in small tribes over the face of the whole earth: but the remembrance of the flood, as well as some confused notions of the rainbow being a kind of information from the gods to men, appear to have been preserved by tradition among all nations; and thousands of pious Christians, without knowing anything of the physical causes of the rainbow, consider it at that day as a token, and even a pledge (as even in truth it is), that the earth will not again be destroyed by a deluge."
OBJ. 3. If all mankind sprang from Noah, the second parent of the human race, it is impossible to account for the origin of the blacks, if the patriarch and his wife were white.
ANS. But this difference in color does not invalidate the narrative of Moses; for it has been ascertained that the influence of climate, and the local circumstances of air, water, food, customs, &c., are sufficient to account for the dissimilarity which is discovered in the appearance of different nations. If dogs, taken to the frigid zone, grow shaggy; and if sheep, transported to the torid zone, exchange their wool for hair, why may not the human species gradually partake of the influence of climate? as experience shows that it does.
Man was formed to reside in all climates. "Man," says an eminent naturalist, who was by no means a bigot in favor of Scripture history, "though white in Europe, black in Africa, yellow in Asia, and red in America, is still the same animal, tinged only with the color of the climate. Where the heat is excessive, as in Guinea and Senegal, the people are perfectly black; where less excessive, as in Abyssinia, the people are less black; where it is more temperate, as in Barbary and Arabia, they are brown; and where mild, as in Europe and Lesser Asia, they are fair." In further corroboration of the influence of climate on the human complexion, we may remark, that there is a colony of Jews, who have been settled at Cochin on the Malabar coast from a very remote period, of which they have lost the memory. Though originally a fair people from Palestine, and from their customs preserving themselves unmixed, they are now become as black as the other Malabarians, who are scarcely a shade lighter than the negroes of Guinea, Benin, or Angola. At Ceylon, also, the Portuguese, who settled there only a few centuries ago, are become blacker than the natives; and the Portuguese, who settled near the Mundingoes, about three hundred years since, differ so little from them as to be called negroes, which they resent as a high indignity.
In short, to adopt the memorable conclusion of the indefatigable philosopher above cited (who deduced it after a minute inquiry from a great number of the best attested observations): "From every circumstance, proof may be obtained that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there was originally but one individual species of men, which, after being multiplied and diffused over the whole surface of the earth, underwent various changes, from the influence of climate, from the difference of food and mode of living, from epidemical disorders, as also from the intermixture, varied ad infinitum, of individuals more or less resembling each other; that these alterations were at first less considerable, and confined to individuals; that afterward, from the continued action of the above causes becoming more general, more sensible, and more fixed, they formed varieties of the species; and that these varieties have been and still are perpetuated from generation to generation, in the same manner as certain disorders and certain maladies pass from parents to their children."
OBJ. 4. The peopling of America and of several islands, in which mischievous terrestrial animals are found, has also been urged as an objection against the universality of the deluge, and consequently against the credibility of the Mosaic history.
ANSWER. Modern geographical discoveries have removed the weight of this objection. The straits which divide North America from Tartary are so narrow as to admit of a very easy passage from one continent to the other; and it is not impossible that they might even have been united by an isthmus, which the combined influence of time and the waves has demolished. The resemblance found between the inhabitants of the opposite sides of that passage and their uncivilized state and rude ignorance of the arts, prove them to have had one common origin. So fully convinced was M. Buffon of this fact, long before the last and most important discoveries on the subject, that he declares he has "no doubt, independently of every theological consideration, that the origin of the Americans is the same with our own."
The parts of the new world which are disjoined from the others, and which have been represented by ignorance and infidelity as vast continents, are by the most recent and complete researches reduced to a few inconsiderable islands; whose inhabitants were, in all probability, conveyed to their present settlements from islands adjacent to the continent of Asia, from which continent all the inhabitants of the new world (excepting the Esquimeaux and a few other American tribes that are evidently descended from the Greenlanders)190have migrated. Nor can it excite surprise, that we are unacquainted with the circumstances of their migration, when we consider that this event probably happened at no great distance from the time when our own ancestors set out from the same regions, to people the western world, by an opposite route.
VIII. The first remarkable occurrence after the flood was the attempt to build the Tower of Babel [Gen. xi, 1-4]; and this is not omitted in pagan records.
Berosus, the Chaldee historian, mentions it, with the following additional circumstances, that it was erected by giants who waged war against the gods, and were at length dispersed, and that the edifice was beaten down by a great wind. According to Josephus, the building of this tower is also mentioned by Hestiaeus, and by one of the ancient sibyls, and also, as Eusebius informs us, by Abydenus and Eupolemus. The tower of Belus, mentioned by Herodotus, is, in all probability, the tower of Babel, repaired by Belus II., king of Babylon, who is frequently confounded by the ancient historians with Belus I., or Nimrod. That it was constructed with burnt bricks and bitumen (as we read in Gen. xi, 3), is attested by Justin, Quintus Curtius, Vitruvius, and other heathen writers, and also by the relations of modern travelers, who have described its ruins.—Horne's Introduction.
FACTS AND IMMORTALITY.
By B. F. Snook
THE great doctrine of man's entire mortality is taught throughout the Bible, and attested by the most plain and unmistakable facts. David well knew that the organ of thought is not an immortal soul, nor a never-dying spirit, but the brain of man. Speaking of death connected with man, he says, "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. cxlvi, 4. We now ask, Why is it so expressly stated that in the day of death the thoughts of man perish? We answer, Because the organ of thought, the brain, then ceases to act—to think. The result is, all thoughts perish, die, or cease, as a natural consequence. This the Bible clearly teaches. Facts also prove the same to be true.
Richmond mentions the case of a woman whose brain was exposed in consequence of the removal of a considerable of its bony covering by disease. He says, "I repeatedly made pressure on the brain, and each time suspended all feeling, and all intellect, which were immediately restored when the pressure was withdrawn." The same writer mentions another case. He says, "There was a man who had been trepanned, and who perceived his intellectual faculties falling, and his existence drawing to a close, every time the effused blood collected upon the brain so as to produce pressure."
Prof. Chapman, in one of his lectures, says, "I saw an individual with his skull perforated, and the brain exposed, who was accustomed to submit his brain to be experimented upon by pressure, and who was exhibited by the late Prof. Weston to his class. His intellect and moral faculties disappeared on the application of pressure to the brain. They were held under the thumb, as it were, and restored at pleasure to their full activity by discontinuing the pressure."
But of all facts, the following, related by Sir Astley Cooper in his Surgical Lectures, is the most remarkable: "A man by the name of Jones received an injury on his head while on board a vessel in the Mediterranean, which rendered him insensible. The vessel soon after made Gibraltar, where Jones was placed in the hospital, and remained several months in the same insensible state. He was then carried on board the Dolphin frigate to Deptford, and from thence was sent to St. Thomas' Hospital, London. He lay constantly on his back and breathed with difficulty. When hungry or thirsty, he moved his lips and tongue. Mr. Clyne, the surgeon, found a portion of the skull depressed, trepanned him, and removed the depressed portion. Immediately after this operation the motion of his fingers occasioned by the beating of the pulse ceased, and in three hours he sat up in bed, sensation and volition returned, and in four days he got up out of his bed and conversed. The last thing he remembered was the circumstance of taking a prize in the Mediterranean. From the moment of the accident, thirteen months and a few days, oblivion had come over him, and all recollection ceased. Yet on removing a small portion of bone which pressed upon the brain he was restored to the full possession of the powers of his mind and body."
We now ask, Could such facts as the above exist if the common theory be true that the soul is immortal, and is the organ of thought? They could not. The powers of immortality can never be so trammelled that they cannot manifest themselves. But the powers of man's thoughts can be so trammelled that thought ceases. Therefore man's thinking powers are not immortal. From this conclusion there is no escape. The above facts prove to a demonstration that the brain is the organ of thought, and seat of consciousness. If you press upon the brain so as to interfere with its action, you suspend thought and consciousness; and the person is just as unconscious as he will be when his brain ceases to act, on account of the heavy hand of death pressing upon it.
Upon this fact rest the following scriptural truths: "The dead know not anything." Eccl. ix, 5. "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence." Ps. cxv, 17. "For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" Ps. vi, 5.
That the reader may see for himself the entire use of the words immortal and immortality in the New Testament,—words with which the theology of the present day is so plentifully interlarded, we give the following from the Englishman's Greek Concordance:
ThE cause of truth perhaps demands that a brief report should be given of our meetings in this State. The attendance at Green Spring was much larger than I had expected. Brethren came from Gilboa, Leipsic, Wauseon, Ayersville, Lovett's Grove, Portage, Cass, Jackson, Fremont, Townsend, Milan, Wakeman, Cleveland, Attica, Republic, and Tiffin, and though greatly disappointed when they found that Bro. and sister White were not coming, yet they were ready to help bear their own burden, and also to pray for the Lord to sustain his servants.
The testimony in regard to spiritual gifts was quite generally received, and the majority were quite free to express their confidence in the gifts, and in those whom the Lord has placed at the head of this work. At the close of the meeting we could not ascertain that there were more than eight or ten out of about one hundred who were in any way disaffected.
The business meeting was truly interesting. With the exceptions referred to above, there was the most perfect harmony throughout. In the social meeting, when the time came for testimonies we remarked that as there were but thirty minutes before the time for preaching, it would be necessary for all to speak short and in quick succession. The hint was taken, and when the time was up thirty had given their testimonies. After such a meeting we could but feel at home in preaching the testimony of Jesus.
Some who had been discouraged, and almost ready to give up their hope, took new courage, and they seem now to have the "go through" spirit. The church at Green Spring are much revived, and it is to be hoped that it will be lasting.
At Lovett's Grove also we gave two discourses on the gifts, which were generally received. Some there had thought there was danger of exalting the gifts above the Bible; but this was shown to be impossible—that it was all pure, and like water, would seek its level. Take a small vessel and a large one, and connect them with a small tube, then if you pour water into the small vessel it will rise in the large one. So in proportion as our interest increases in that which the Holy Spirit communicates at one time, it will increase in all that it has ever revealed. Like the law, if we fail in one point we fail in all, because in slighting one we offer insult to all. There can be no danger that we will exalt the fourth commandment above the rest, because they are all of the same nature. We cannot have an increase of genuine love for the prophecy of Isaiah without a proportionate increase of interest in the book of Revelation. There is not a caution in all the Bible against thinking too much of what God has revealed, any more than there is against becoming too pure or too holy.
At Gilboa we found the seat of opposition to the name, "Seventh-day Adventist." The church there had heard three or four lengthy discourses against it, and still there were but three or four undecided. There were but three hours to devote to the discussion, and half of this we freely offered to T. J. B.; but to our surprise he brought forward not a single text of scripture to show that the name was anti-scriptural. After our reply we had a social meeting, and had a real melting season. The good Spirit of the Lord was there. Those who had been halting between two opinions came to a decision, and the brethren said they did not know of any that had been trying to keep the law that were opposed to the visions, or the name, when the meeting closed. Sister Butler spoke with freedom; said her sympathy was with the body, and that she could not reject the gifts without giving up the message. She solicits the prayers of God's people in this trying time. Sister Mary Waggoner said she had lived in Battle Creek some time, and that by becoming more acquainted with Bro. and sister White, her confidence was much increased in them, and also in the truth. The closing up of this meeting was good, for the Lord did truly bless and comfort his people.
The brethren generally think that the effect of this meeting would have been different upon T. J. B. if an "officious informer" had not come about fifty miles to prejudice his mind against us and the brethren. To go up and down among God's people as a tale-bearer is bad enough, but to misrepresent the testimony and motives of those who are walking in the fear of God and in the fellowship of all the saints, must be a grievous sin in the sight of God. It must be a bold, bad man that will take such a course, and as an individual, I do here protest against any person's being approbated in visiting the churches who is in any way disaffected, and especially who has a spirit of opposition to the body. "Mark them that cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them." Rom. xvi, 17. "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of191Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed." 2 John i, 9, 10. A part of the "doctrine of Christ" is the unity and gifts of the church; hence any murmurer or fault-finder is not to be tolerated among us. Hear the apostle again: "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one, no, not to eat." 1 Cor. v, 11. This eating doubtless refers to the Lord's supper; but the point is that we should not "keep company" with one that is a "railer." Again, in Gal. ii, 4, 5: "And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour."
False brethren may be unawares brought in, but when we see that they are fault-finders our duty is to reprove them, and not to listen to them, no, not for an hour.
Those who are presumptuous, self-willed, despise government (or discipline), and would subvert whole houses, should have no place among us. I hope all God's dear people will be faithful in this matter.
Brn. Clarke and Baker attended all our meetings, and rendered us good help in backing up the testimony. May the Lord continue to make them useful in their proper spheres in the cause of truth.
I received on this tour for Association, Review and Instructor, about $160, besides they were forward to remember to help me on after a godly sort, for which they have my hearty thanks. I do ardently pray and confidently hope that this is only the beginning of brighter days for the cause in Ohio.