ers a
bond of union for all great minds, and for all good hearts. It increases
our power to reform both churches and states, without urging us to wild
and revolutionary measures, which might imperil the interests of both.
To accept this religion, to avow this faith, involves nothing of which
we need be ashamed, but everything in which we may reasonably glory. We
escape alike the follies of theological dreamers, and the gloom and
horrors of infidel philosophy. We live amidst the soft mild glories of
eternal light; we cheer ourselves with the richest and most glorious
hopes, and we spend our lives in the grandest contemplations and the
noblest occupations the heart of man can conceive.

8. The vainest of all vain things, the most unseemly and revolting of
all forms of pride, is the pride of disbelief in God and immortality.
And the maddest if not the wickedest of all occupations, is to labor to
destroy the faith and blight the hopes of others. What good, humane, or
merciful motive can a man have to impel him to such a horrible
undertaking?

9. How soothing the thought that your sufferings are marked by a loving
God, and will be overruled for your good! And how cheering the thought,
when life is in danger, or drawing to a close, that death is the gate of
a higher life! And how comforting the thought, when your loved ones are
leaving you, that they are going before you to a happier home, and that
by-and-by you will see their faces, hear their voices, and share their
presence and society again! And what a relief, when visiting the sick,
the sorrowing, or the dying, to be able to speak to them of an infinite
Father, of another life, and of brighter scenes, and of a happier lot,
in a better land!

10. We have spent time enough among the dead. And you can see with your
own eyes which are the living, loving, and laboring portions of the
Church. You can see which portions build the most schools, teach the
most children, reclaim the most drunkards and profligates, and do most
to develop and cultivate the religious and moral sentiments of the
masses. And one of the lessons we always pressed on you was, to judge a
tree by its fruits. We do not intend to swerve from our plan of avoiding
sectarian and theological controversy; but we may ask you to compare the
amount of good religious work done by the Methodists in fifty years,
with the good done by the so-called liberal Christians, and to draw
your own conclusion. The Primitive Met