Ix South Carolina. 511 



spiritual tranquillity which shall never be disturbed. So far from 

 being unsettled in our faith by all these things, we should rather 

 feel that the word of God is made more sure, for the Scriptures 

 have taught us that these things must needs be before the end come. 

 And surely these earthly disorders and losses should excite in us 

 the more ardent desire for those immutable and everlasting joys 

 which await us in the life to come. "Set then your affections on 

 tilings above, and not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and 

 your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your 

 life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." 

 Happy are they whose earthly losses are thus made to turn to their 

 heavenly gain. 



It is in times of darkness like the present, when the ways of 

 Providence are intricate and mysterious, and his designs are to hu- 

 man minds utterly unaccountable, when Reason is baffled in all her 

 efforts to comprehend the plans and ends of Infinite Wisdom, that 

 Faith reposes in sublime composure upon tiie eternal word of truth, 

 and awaits with patience the solution of the problem, under the firm 

 and unalterable conviction that "the Lord God omnipotent reign- 

 eth." Soon shall the elemental storm subside, and our ark, which 

 has been tossed upon the waves of this deluge, shall rest in calm se- 

 curity upon the celestial Ararat, and we shall walk out amid the 

 glories of the new heaven and the new earth, delivered from all 

 fears of future convulsion or revolution, beholding the beautiful en- 

 sign of our safety in the "rainbow round about the throne." 



The duties growing out of the new relation which you are called 

 to sustain to the negroes of the South, in so far as they affect their 

 religious condition and spiritual welfare, are not essentially different 

 from those which have always commended themselves heretofore to 

 your Christian judgment, and which have received at your hands a 

 faithful and zealous performance. While under your provident 

 management and kind treatment, this portion of our population 

 was made to surpass in the enjoyment of all the physical comforts 

 of life the corresponding classes of society in every nation of the 

 globe, at the same time, through the active instrumentalities which 

 your Christian liberality cherished and employed for their religious 

 rescue, thousands have been brought from "darkness to light," and 

 transferred from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God. It 

 can hardly be supposed that within the limits of a Conference 

 whose Church-members have furnished, in their annual contribu- 

 tions, more than thirty thousand dollars to extend the privileges of 



