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his richest and sweetest banquets: and we know also, that even honesty and conscience, when not guided by truth and knowledge, are as terrible and desolating in their career, as the worst passions of the human heart. How important then, to have the revealed will of God, and how necessary that we should be guided, in all things involving the deepest consequences, by its positive and unequivocal precepts alone. But whenever we undertake to hunt for the will and purposes of God in his word, and which he has not revealed to us, you may rest assured that ninety-nine times out of every hundred, we return from the investigation with our own wills, and with our own purposes, which we mistake for the will and purposes of God: and it is then and there, where we least expect it, that pride has been most triumphant, and Satan most successful over us.
We will give you one extract more from the writings of Paul on this subject—one which, of itself, is sufficient to settle the question, were there nothing more, contained in his first epistle to Timothy, from the first to the sixth verse of the vi. chapter.
“Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them; because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing; but doting about questions und strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railing, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness; from such withdraw thyself.”
In meditating upon this passage, we are almost disposed to believe that the inspired apostle had the whole phalanx of abolitionists in prospective, and that he was present, in spirit, at one of their conventions; for certainly never were the characters of a set of men so truly and faithfully drawn; every feature and lineament here given, is true to the living characters and conduct of these men.
How perfectly applicable is this “doting about questions and strifes of words” to our modern abolitionists. See what a variety of questions and measures distract their councils and assemblies! What a changing of grounds—what a vailing of purposes—and what
