k us and joined in with the shepherds and those of like faith, to
berate us. But we soon learnt from the prophets that there would be a
people in the last days, answering this description, that God had promised
to save, called _Outcasts_!--Jer. xxx: 17; Psl. cxlvii: 2. Now you are
encouraging these same deniers of our faith to be _peaceable_; for--say
you--we shall soon get into the kingdom of God. Methinks if we should all
meet there under existing circumstances, there would be a great deal of
confessing before we could be reconciled to listen to each other's joys.
But it will not be so; if you and your brethren, and the _outcasts_ too,
are saved, then I predict that we shall have to stay here until a perfect
reconciliation takes place. When that will be, I cannot tell, for in my
judgment the gulf between us has been widening for the last three years.
Now, I prefer to remain on that side of it with the _Outcasts_, for they
have the promise that they shall be gathered. When we made our sacrifice
during a cry at midnight, we considered and were fully persuaded that we
were doing our last work, and surely that would _be done the best of any
work_. Then of course we had no right whatever to take back the sacrifices
we then made, and rob God. We were fully aware that our disappointments
would not change our course, for if we were ever saved it must be by our
onward course. But those with whom you were associated sounded the
retreat, and all that did not follow in their train have been subject to
your unsparing epithets.

If you knew as much about this afflicted and torn people, (whom you have
been the instrument in leading out into the Philadelphia state of the
church, and then leaving and driving them from you,) as I do, you would
shudder to appear before Him who has promised to be a Father to them and
keep them. The principal cause of many offences which they committed were
from bad teachers and teaching. You have a sample here in this work. (We
have no wish, _neither do we uphold_ any one who does not follow the
teachings of the sure word.) I think you have listened too much to them.

If I could just take you with me to some of the stopping places of these
people, and show you their scanty wood piles at this inclement season of
the year, and then to the barrels which once held their beef, pork and
flour, together with the scanty subsistence they now have, and with no
earthly prospect of another supply, only as their trust