Now come, gentlemen, _you_ who have no faith in lightning rods--you who think it _blasphemy_ to talk of warding off GOD ALMIGHTY'S LIGHTNING!--as if it were not just as pleasing to him to see you warding off the lightning by steel rods, as warding off the ague and fever by jesuit's bark; come, I say, and see how very visibly he approbates our works of wisdom, which make us like himself. You have read the structure of this steeple--the top, a _seventy feet spire without any rod_--then a rod that went down zigzag, about thirty feet; then a plaistered brick and stone wall without any rod, to the ground. A dreadful cloud came over the steeple. At the first flash, away went the whole of the seventy foot wooden spire, scattered all over the church yard in splinters fit to boil the preacher's tea kettle. The lightning then found the iron wire which it instantly seized on, quitting all things else for that, and darting along with it in so close an embrace, as barely to widen a little the gimblet holes through which it passed. It then followed the wire in all its meanders, whether perpendicular or horizontal--never turning either to the right or to the left, to hurt the building, but passed through it the whole length of the wire, which was about thirty feet, as harmlessly as a lamb. But soon as its dear chain was ended, it assumed the furious lion again; attacking the building with the most destructive rage, dashing its foundation stones to a great distance, and in other respects damaging it dreadfully. Now what can be more reasonable than doctor Franklin's remarks on this very remarkable occurrence? "I. That lightning, in its passage through a building, will leave wood, brick, or stone, to pass as far as it can in metal; and not enter those again, till the metal conductor ceases. "II. The quantity of lightning that passed through this steeple must have been very great, by its effects on the lofty spire, &c., and yet great as this quantity was, it was conducted by a small wire without the least damage to the building as far as the wire extended. "III. Hence it seems probable, that if even such a small wire had been extended from the top of the steeple to the earth, before the storm, no damage would have been done by that stroke of lightning." A fate exactly similar to this attended the great Dutch church, of New York, in 1750. As far as the wire was extended, which was from the top of the steeple, to within a few feet of the earth, the lightning closely accompanied it, passing with it through small holes in the floors, without doing the least damage. But the instant it quitted the wire, it commenced its ravages on the building.