“The same is true in regard to cities and nations. We need be in as little danger, in general, in arguing from what occurs to them, as in the case of an individual. There is now no doubt among men why the old world was destroyed by a flood; why Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed; why Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, and Jerusalem were overthrown. If a certain course of conduct, long pursued and in a great variety of circumstances, leads uniformly to health, happiness, and property, we are in little danger of inferring that it is in accordance with the will of God. If it lead to poverty and tears, we are in as little danger of error in inferring that it is a violation of some great law which God has ordained for the good of man. If an institution among men is always followed by certain results; if we find them in all climes, and under all forms of government, and in every stage of society, it is not unsafe to draw an inference from these facts on the question whether God regards the institution as a good one, and one which he designs shall be perpetuated for the good of society. “It would be easy to make an application of these undeniable principles to the subject of slavery. The inquiry would be, whether, in certain results, always found to accompany slavery, and now developing themselves in our own country, there are no clear indications of what is the will of God.” We subscribe to the doctrine that God often reveals his will concerning a thing by the acts of his providence affecting it. But we contend that God has extended the field of Christian vision by a more direct revelation, and by the gift of faith; and that the mind which can neither hear the revelation, nor feel the faith, is merely the mind of a philosopher, not of a Christian: he may be a believer in a God, but not in the Saviour of the world. The direction contained in the foregoing quotation, by which we are to discriminate what are the will and law of God, may be considered, when presented by the mere teacher of abolition, among the most artful, because among the most insidious, specimens of abolition logic. It is artful, because, to the unschooled, it presents all that may seem necessary in the foundation of a sound system of theology; and, further, because every bias of the human heart is predisposed to receive it as an entire platform of doctrine. It is insidious and dangerous, because, although the mind acquiesces in its _truth_, yet it is _false_ when proposed as the lone and full foundation of religious belief. On such secret and hidden rocks, infidelity has ever established her _lights_, her _beacons_ to the benighted voyager; and, in their surrounding seas, the shallops of hell have for ever been the most successful wreckers, in gathering up multitudes of the lost, to be established as faithful subjects of the kingdom of darkness.