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 is in the living God, in whom they had committed their all, because of their honest sacrifice and anxious waiting for their coming Lord; turned out of their former employment and reproached for keeping God’s holy Sabbath day; whipped by cruel, unmerciful men for shouting the praises of their God and king, and still persevering in their faith, &c. And then, for a contrast, to step on board the cars and be rolled away to your own comfortable and commodious house, with well stocked barn and granaries, beef and pork barrels—the produce of your own valuable farm—with all things that heart could wish for, and set down by your comfortable fire with your family, (all believers with you in the coming of Jesus,) and recount to them the strange scenes you had witnessed among an afflicted people, who once listened with anxiety and delight to every word you had to say about the second coming of Jesus, and they were so delighted with this, to them, joyful news, that they wanted to hear about it all the time. We may imagine your conversation to proceed somewhat in the following strain: “You remember how elder Himes used to insist on my going with him from city to city, and from state to state, because of the people’s anxiety to hear me preach about the coming of Christ in 1843 and ’44.” “Yes, father, I remember it well—for when I was with you it seemed as though the people were hardly willing to let us come home and rest a little while.”