s, possess more
dignity, and are associated with a greater work than that involved
in the isolated sorrows of a single family. God is chastising a cold,
corrupt, and negligent church, through the turbulence and outrage of the
people. What has our church in this country been, within the memory of
man, but a mere secular establishment, like the law or the army, into
which men enter not from a lofty and pure sense of the greatness
of their mission, but as a convenient means of securing an easy and
indolent profession? I know not what our church might have been if left
to herself; but this I do know, that for many a long year the unblushing
iniquity of British policy has served only to corrupt and degrade her,
and to make what ought to be the speaking oracle of God's truth, the
consolation of the penitent sinner, the sure guide to the ignorant or
the doubtful--yes, to make that Church, which ought to be a source of
purity, of blessing, and of edification, to all--a system of corrupt
rewards for political prostitution, parcelled out to meet the sordid
spirit of family alliances and ungodly bargains; or, in other words, to
turn her into a mass of bribes--a base appendage to the authority of
the British minister, who used her as the successful medium of at
once enslaving and demoralizing the country, instead of elevating and
civilizing it. It is for this great neglect of national duty, and for
permitting ourselves to be imbued with the carnal and secular spirit,
which has led us so far from practical truth and piety, that the church
is now suffering. We have betrayed our trust, and been treacherous both
to God and man. For my own part, my children, I am glad that I and mine
have been counted worthy to suffer in this cause. We are now passing
through the furnace, but we shall come out purified. Our grossness shall
be purged away, and the proud spirit of mammon burned out of us. But you
know that God, my dear ones, can accomplish a double purpose by the
same means. Our church shalt be exalted and purified, and her ministers
prepared for a higher and holier mission than that in which they
have hitherto been engaged. She shall awaken to a sense of her great
responsibility; a new spirit shall be created within her; a living
energy shall characterize those who have slumbered under the unholy
shadows which she has cast around her, and those who think that they
are smiting her unto death shall find that they have been made only
the ins