| 644 false constructions upon the prophesies, and of course they did not know when they were fulfilled. They declared if they had lived in the days of their fathers, they would not have killed the prophets, but evinced the utter futility of their professions, by slaying those whom God had sent among them. The mystery of the whole was they were destitute of revelation which God intended, but for the wickedness of man, should always remain in the church-Lo! the fulness [fullness] of time had come, and God spake as he did on the morn of creation, "Let there be light" and there was light. The messiah had come, but Oh! how humbly, how directly the reverse from the common expectation; the Jews had rejected the prophets, and they knew him not.
Who will say that the prophets are not necessary? Who will say that revelation is unnecessary? Jesus went forth (preceded by John, who worked no miracle) and established his church on the foundation of apostles and prophets, he himself being the chief cornerstone. Ephesians ii 20. And he gave to this church spiritual gifts, which were to continue in the church so long as she remained in an organized form. Eph., iv., 1 Cor. xii. And for this church he prayed just previous to his betrayal, when he knew that he must soon leave them, "Neither pray I for thee alone; but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. That they may all be one; as the father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. How different all this is from the religion of the present day; even the very foundation is taken away, and most of the gifts, and so far from praying for a union which the gospel contemplates, and for which Jesus prayed as an evidence to the world of the divinity of his mission, the religionists of the present day, when talking with the Mormons, delight to call to mind and expatiate on the advantages of division in the christian church; the fact of division they are too often reminded of by the jeers of the sceptic [skeptic], and the failure of their much loved projects, and to cancel their confusion, they have taxed their inventive powers, to construct some kind of a robe to hide its hideous deformity. How preposterous to tell us of its advantages. Allowing that some benefit might arise from discussion, can they at all compare with the more serious of the tapestry-garments dipped in blood, the groans of the wounded and the dying-the broad and constantly swelling ranks of infidelity, embracing the brightest and most promising portion of the world, and last, not least, that spirit of bigotry and persecution which is as savage as the tiger, and as cruel and relentless as the grave. I ask where is the grin? and echo answers where? How anyone can for a moment suppose after studying the New Testament, that any church not organized according to the pattern there laid down by the great Head of the church, can be the true one, it is difficult to conceive, unless their creed be "credo quia impossible." The pigmy form, dissonant spirit, repulsive aspect, and incongruous teachings, of the present churches, prove to any person with a cast of mind ordinarily reflective, that they are the growth of any other than an apostolic age. It is impossible to convince the world that that decrepid [decrepit] form without dignity or grace, characterized by a certainty of disposition, wholesale denunciation, and a spirit of falsehood and murderous persecution, is the pure, peaceful, transferring, religion of Him who spake as a man never spake.
It is most certainly obvious that there has been a wide departure from the simplicity of primitive christianity. This apostasy has been foretold in the days of the apostles. I Tim. iv, Tim. ii, iii., &c.
At the close of the sixteenth century, such men as Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Melancthon, awoke from their profound slumbers, heartily sick of the corruptions and mummeries of Papacy, and were hailed by thousands of the sons and daughters of oppression and superstition, as the suspicious omens of a brighter and happier day. They discarded, to be sure, many of the follies of the system of religion from which they had just emerged, but after all, theirs was a partial reformation-they were still in Babylon-their highest aims seem to be to mend the old system; and prove that time to the present day, at different periods, such men as Wesley Murray, Edwards, Campbell, and have arisen from some cause or another, and have become the projectors of new editions of christianity, so that the religious world has become a Babel of conflicting faiths; and the skeptic points triumphantly to the opposing sects, as an unanswerable argument in favor of his assertion that the Bible affords ample ground on which to rear superstructures of faith wide as poles asunder, and therefore cannot have emanated from God.
Christianity as it fell from the lips of Jesus Christ and his apostles, is now treated as if it had at length been discovered to be fictitious; not only by infidel and the unthinking, but by the various denominations of modern christians themselves. From the days in which Christ said the kingdom of Heaven suffereth
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