God of my Fathers

The Christian church is even yet but very imperfectly freed from the unholy influence, and the mischievous operation of human authority. The house requires to be more carefully swept than it was at the reformation from Popery, and a more thorough search must be made for the old leaven, that it may be completely cast out. Let all individual Christians, let all christian churches, learn to act on the principle, that in reference to christian faith, and duty, and worship, the question is not, ‘How thinkest thou?' but, "How readest thou?" not, ‘What is use and wont?' but, "What is written in the law?" not, ‘How is it to be arranged by us?' but, "How has it been settled by our Master?" Let us "seek out of the book of the Lord and read." However sincere a man may be in a creed or worship. of his own invention, or of other men's invention, it will profit him nothing. "The faithful witness" pronounces such a creed and such a worship "vain." May God, by the mighty power of his truth, overturn all the altars to human authority erected in christian churches and christian hearts; and in the implicit belief of divine truth, because it is divine—the unquestioning obedience of divine precepts, because they are divine— and the cheerful observance of divine ordinances, because they are divine, may "the Lord alone be exalted."