Page:The looking-glass.djvu/57

Rh the Lord is listen. Let all darkness flee away like the shades of night at the rising of the sun. We have been too long in obscurity already; we have stumbled one over another; we have stood in our own light. We are carelessly drifting down with the tide of prejudice which has set against our best friends: we have wrongly and ignorantly advised our people to continue in the same course; and what is the result of all these things? Bad—bad—bad enough! In the first place, it has introduced enmity into your Churches, and old members have been disregarded and cast out, until at length the Church is divided. "A house divided against itself, it cannot stand." It must fall, and become desolate.

Had we been deeply engaged in sending the Gospel to the heathen and to our afflicted brethren in Africa and elsewhere, you would not have had all those confusions and troubles which now disgrace your Churches. While these evils remain in your Churches, religion and the Son of God are gone out of them, and all your labors and offerings are vanity and vexation of spirit. Therefore, look well to those things, and consider your own salvation and that of all those under your charge.

Let us not rest in idly persuading people to that course which we know nothing about; but let us