I have neither time nor space to waste in useless apologies, heads or divisions, but shall come directly to the question, What is Babylon?
The scripture definition is confusion. Now if among all the sects which exist professing faith in the Bible there is not confusion I confess that I should not know where to look for it.
I take the position that the nominal churches are Babylon one proof of which, I have given above. That she is fallen needs no other proof than to compare her spirituality thirty years since with what it is at the present time.
Where are the nursing fathers and mothers? Where are the meek, the pure, the merciful, the peace-makers and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness?
That all these characteristics exist in mystic Babylon, I admit, or the call would not be, Come out of her my people. This call must be obeyed if we would not be partakers of her sins, or receive of her plagues. That she has become the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, I could multiply proof but I will select only one. John Wesley after having been conversant with the system and practice of American slavery, pronounced it the sum of all villainies. The churches are the strong holds of this sin in which every other is embraced inasmuch as they apologize for and commune with it. Every intelligent person whether in the church or out, knows that if the church had taken the right position when she first understood her relation to this sin, it would long since have been numbered with the things that were not; but alas for her and the poor bondmen, it is not so. She has nursed a viper in her bosom, whose poison has diffused itself through the whole system, till the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, without sufficient vitality to restore a healthy action.
The physicians have healed the hurt slightly till disease has sapped the constitution, and ruin is sure. It may, like a decayed tree, stand and spread itself out in a calm, and even in a gentle gale; but when the wind and storm come, fall it must. It cannot stand; and every sign and prophecy must fail if the storm is not at hand. That there are honest, pious souls in the churches, I have no doubt. I believe they are receiving their last call to come out. Flee, O flee, to the mountain of holiness and take refuge under the shadow of the Almighty.