How is it, sir, that devils do not trouble modern churches, as they did the primitive saints? Are _they_ done away too? Miracles and devils done away! The canon of the scriptures closed! miracles and devils ceased! Happy christianity; thy warfare has ceased,--thy troubles are ended! Blessed rest! Joyful reign of righteousness! As many ways to heaven now, as there are eyelets in a seive! Oh, brother, blush for thy theology, and for the doleful conclusions to which thy creeds have brought thee! The reign of Satan, for near eighteen hundred years, has almost effaced every relic of Bible truth from the earth. Every thing that is valuable and powerful in the ancient system of prophets is done away, and the devil himself is supposed, by many, to be merely the evil passions of men. But, sir, the devil is not dead nor done away. But the gospel of apostles will rouse him up again; and knowing that his time is short, he will show his spite again on those bodies from which he shall be expelled by the apostolic priesthood, in choking, tearing, and casting them down to the ground. And who shall be able to stand, when deceptive miracles, and lying wonders far greater than have ever been known since the foundation of the world, shall be practised, and deceive many? Now, sir, before I close this appeal, suffer me to allude to the intolerant and cruel persecution of the Saints, in Illinois. The nineteenth century, and the great republic of the United States of North America, must have the pages of its history blackened with the record of a persecution that classes with the bloody acts of Nero and Caligula. From fifteen to twenty thousand citizens of the United States were forced in an illegal, violent, and inhuman manner to forsake their homes and possessions in the state of Illinois, the greater part of them during the inclemency of the winter of 1846. A large and populous city of eleven thousand and thirty-five souls of men, women, and children, has been compulsorily evacuated, under the dread of inevitable massacre if they persisted to occupy their firesides and homes. Continued acts of house-burning and mid-day assassinations, and midnight murder, and large gatherings of armed and lawless forces, with heavy pieces of artillery necessitated this numerous people to leave their flourishing city, merchandise, and farms, in the most inclement period of the year, for the purpose of self preservation.