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divide our earthly friends and break up family ties, and thus causing separation and estrangement, if not bitterness and wrath among them. Will not, does not God so regard it as a crime where a like course is pursued toward His family in the church? Will he not visit in sore displeasure any who wilfully, presumptuously, and knowingly divide his people It requires no stretch of human insight to see the certainty of it, and let me remark here, that though for a season or time they may prosper and bid fair, and all their doings may seem clear and bright as a "bright midsummer's day," yet will the displeasure of the Almighty overtake them, and by his own mysterious way by which he governs the universe, sit as with a clear heat on their works and measures, burning and scorching up and producing such drought upon it as to make it evident that the face of the Almighty is set against them. "Though it tarry, yet will it come," saith the Lord.
Happy for Mr. Gloucester that no division took place in his day. It would have crushed and broken his spirit, no doubt, and brought him to a premature grave. But the good God spared him the sight of seeing the church of his care—the object of his prayers the hopes of his future comfort in his declining years—distracted and riven asunder by those who were the companions of his trials, and his partners in his early struggles for the church.
The church being now divided, the only alternative left to the remaining members was to cast about and adopt such measures as were best calculated to advance their interest; in this they were not without the best advisers; the same friends that always stood by them did not forsake them in this time of their troubles; the presbytery once more became a nursing father to them;
