nary way of the age; by association, preaching, the press and prayer. These are the principles and measures, which professors of religion and doctors of divinity "deprecate." 16. "We are all abolitionists at the North, and what would you have more of us?" Just such abolitionists you are, we reply, as slaveholding desires, and requires you to be. Abolitionists, who, opposing and overthrowing every doctrine and system you really dislike, let slavery go unmolested; who treat colored people among you as if they were made for slavery; who discourage their moral and intellectual elevation all in your power; who mob their friends among you for advocating their right to freedom; who tear down schools erected for their instruction; go South and hold slaves yourselves-are slaveholders to the extent of your occasion and convenience. 17. "The measures of the abolitionists tend only to perpetuate slavery." Do they, indeed! Then pray how comes it to pass, that those at the South, who defend slavery as the " corner stone of our republican edifice,” and wish it perpetuated, are so much opposed to our measures? How is it that the defenders of slavery are everywhere opposed to our measures, and declare that we ought to be put to death for them without benefit of clergy, if our measures tend to put off emancipation and to prolong the existence of slavery! Ha, friend? 18. The slaveholders cannot emancipate, on account of the laws forbidding it." In the same way individual robbers cannot cease to plunder on account of the rules and regulations of the land to which they belong. And did Daniel refuse to pray to the living God, when a law was made by the government under which he lived to prevent it? Did the apostles refuse to preach, when forbidden by the magistrates? 19. "But emancipation under such laws would be an injury to the slave." Of that, the slave must be left to judge, because his is the right to judge. It is for him to say whether or not he will take shelter from a gang of wolves in the den of some very generous individual wolf. 20. "The interferences of abolitionists injure the slave, and make his condition worse." So. Then it was bad before. But is it worse? It would be very convenient for slaveholders to say But when are tyrants most likely to be humane, generous, kind?—When no one questions their goodness or their rights, or, when narrowly watched, and laid under the strongest motives to show themselves as they have affirmed themselves to be? 21. "Abolition endangers the Union !" The threat of separation is almost out of date. The North is not urged to recede from the Union; the South would not gain anything by it. A dissolution of the Union would be the death blow to slavery. 22. Your operations tend to excite insurrections." This is a mistake. Insurrections are always excited by oppression, never by the hope of relief. 23. They disturb the harmony of the churches." Precisely that harmony which ought to be disturbed, viz: harmony of sin. And what is the spiritual condition of the church, or any branch of it which cannot bear the plain and faithful declaration of the whole counsel of God? We must not rebuke sin lest it disturb "the peace of the church!" |