In South Carolina. 499 



borders uncqnaled in the history of civilized nations, has left you 

 not only politically and socially in greatly altered circumstances, 

 but also, as members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 

 several new and untried relations, out of which must grow corre- 

 sponding obligations and duties of the gravest import. 



It is proper, first, to remind you, although the fact is too obvious 

 to be readily overlooked, that for the adjudication of all questions 

 relating to faith and morals, you are to look solely to the revealed 

 will of God as contained in the canonical books of the Old and New 

 Testament Scriptures. Hence, it is contained in the fifth article 

 of our religion that "the Holy Scriptures contain all things nec- 

 essary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 

 be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should 

 be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or neces- 

 sary for salvation." 



Notwithstanding this recognized standard of doctrine and of duty, 

 there is a strange proclivity in the human mind to judge of the 

 soundness of religious faith and practice, not by viewing them in the 

 light of God's word, but in relation to his providences. Thus, in 

 patriarchal times, Job was adjudged by his condoling friends to be 

 guilty of enormous crimes, because extraordinary calamities were 

 permitted to befall him. But God rebuked the presumption and 

 corrected the error of this Arabian theology. " The Lord said to 

 Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee and against 

 thy two friends ; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is 

 right as my servant Job hath." Thus, when the blessed Saviour 

 sojourned upon earth, and went about doing good, his disciples, on 

 the occasion of his imparting sight to a man who was blind from his 

 birth, "asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his par- 

 ents, that he was born blind?" Detecting the false causes to which 

 men are apt to refer the judgments of God, and repudiating the opin- 

 ion on which the inquiry of his disciples was obviously founded, 

 viz., that God's love and hatred are written upon his providential 

 dealings, "Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his 

 parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." 

 Thus, also, in the Middle Ages whole nations sought the judgment 

 of God through an appeal to the ordeal of fire and water, the trial 

 by single combat, or walking blindfold over red-hot shovels or bars 

 of iron. But the innocent were found to suffer equally with the 

 guilty, and men were confounded and began at length to abandon 

 their folly. Now the appeal to Heaven is taken by nations upon 



