oming wretchedness of him who
is knowingly instrumental in producing this ruin; and suppose he should
put at the bottom of the sign this question, viz., What, you may ask,
can be my object in acting so much like a devil incarnate, and bringing
such accumulated wretchedness upon a comparatively happy people? and
under it should put the true answer, MONEY; and go on to say, I have a
family to support; I want money, and must have it; this is my business,
I was brought up to it; and if I should not follow it I must change my
business, or I could not support my family. And as all faces begin to
gather blackness at the approaching ruin, and all hearts to boil with
indignation at its author, suppose he should add for their consolation,
"If I do not bring this destruction upon you, somebody else will." What
would they think of him? what would all the world think of him? what
_ought_ they to think of him? And is it any worse for a man to tell the
people beforehand honestly what he will do, if they buy and use his
poison, than it is to go on and do it? And what if they are not aware of
the mischief which he is doing them, and he can accomplish it through
their own perverted and voluntary agency? Is it not equally abominable,
if _he knows_ it, and does not cease from producing it?

And if there are churches whose members are doing such things, and those
churches are not blessed with the presence and favor of the Holy Ghost,
they need not be at any loss for the reason. And if they should _never_
again, while they continue in this state, be blessed with the reviving
influence of God's Spirit, they need not be at any loss for the reason.
Their own members are exerting a strong and fatal influence against it;
and that too after Divine Providence has shown them what they are doing.
And in many such cases there is awful guilt with regard to this thing
resting upon the whole church. Though they have known for years what
these men were doing; have seen the misery, heard the oaths, witnessed
the crimes, and known the wretchedness and deaths which they have
occasioned, and perhaps have spoken of it, and deplored it among one
another; many of them have never spoken on this subject to the persons
themselves. They have seen them scattering firebrands, arrows, and death
temporal and eternal, and yet have never so much as warned them on the
subject, and never besought them to give up their work of death.

An individual lately conversed with one