to do so, and you say, 'We viewed this unexpected opportunity of
throwing our views before the public, as _providential_.'

"_Answer_. When the devil is hard pushed, and likely to be run down in
the chase, it is an old trick of his to start some smaller game, and
thus cause his pursuers to strike off from his own track on to that of
one of his imps. It was certainly a very _providential_ opportunity
for Nehemiah to 'throw his views before the public,' when Geshem,
Sanballat, and Tobiah invited and urged him to stop building the wall
and hold a public discussion as to the _right_ to build. And doubtless
a great many Jews said to him, 'Unless we _establish_ the right in the
first place, it will surely be taken from us utterly. This is a
providential opportunity to preach truth in the very camp of the
enemy.' But who got it up, God or the devil?... Look over the history
of the world, and in nine cases out of ten we shall find that Satan,
after being foiled in his arts to stop a great moral enterprise, has
finally succeeded by diverting the reformers from the _main_ point to
a _collateral_, and that too just at the _moment_ when such diversion
brought ruin. Now, even if this opportunity made it the duty of
_somebody_ to take up the subject (which is not proved by the fact of
the opportunity), why should _you_ give _your_ views, and with _your
name_? Others as able might be found, and as familiar with the
subject. But you say, others 'are driven off the field, and cannot
answer the objections.' I answer, your _names_ do not answer the
objections.... How very easy to have helped a third person to the
argument. By publicly making an onset in your own names, in a
widely-circulated periodical, upon a doctrine cherished as the apple
of their eye (I don't say really _believed_) by nine tenths of the
church and the world; what was it but a formal challenge to the whole
community for a regular set-to?"

He proceeds to speak of such a "set to" and debate as "producing
alienation wide-spread in our own ranks, and introducing confusion and
every evil work." He urges the necessity of vindicating a right "by
exercising it," instead of simply arguing for it.

Of ministers he says: "True, there is a pretty large class of
ministers who are fierce about it, and will fight, but a still larger
class that will come over _if_ they first witness the successful
practice rather than meet it in the shape of a doctrine to be
swallowed. Now, if i