or had sunk under various hardships, you have seen their remains delivered to the deep, till the sea should give up his dead. You have carried the survivors into the vilest slavery, never to end but with life; such slavery as is not found among the Turks at Algiers, no, nor among the Heathens in America. 3. May I speak plainly to you? I must. Love constrains me; love to you, as well as to those you are concerned with. Is there a God? You know there is. Is he a just God? Then there must be a state of retribution; a state wherein the just God will reward every man according to his works. Then what reward will he render to you? O think betimes! before you drop into eternity! Think now, He shall have judgment without mercy that showed no mercy.' Are you a man? Then you should have a human beart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no sympathy, no sense of human wo, no pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the great God deal with you as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands. And at "that day it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for you!". But if your heart does relent, though in a small degree, know it is a call from the God of love. And "to-day, if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart." To-day resolve, God being your helper, to escape for your life. Regard not money! All that a man hath will he give for his life! Whatever you lose, lose not your soul: nothing can countervail that Jess. Immediately quit the horrid trade: at all events, be an honest man And 4. This equally concerns every merchant who is engaged in the slave trade It is you that induce the African villain to sell his countrymen; and in order thereto, to steal, rob, murder men, women, and children without number, by enabling the English villain to pay him for so doing, whom you overpay for his execrable labour. It is your money that is the spring of all, that empowers him to go on: so that whatever he or the African does in this matter is all your act and deed. is your conscience quite reconciled to this? Does it never reproach you at all? Has gold entirely blinded your eyes, and stupified your heart? Can you see, can you feel, no harm therein? Is it doing as you would be done to? Make the case your own. "Master," said a slave at Liverpool to the merchant that owned him, "what, if some of my countrymen were to come here,and take away my mistress, and Master Tommy, and Master Billy, and carry them into our country, and make them slaves, how would you like it?" His answer was worthy of a man: "I will never buy a slave more while I live," O let his resolution be yours! Have no more any part in this detestable business. Instantly leave it to those unfeeling wretches, who Laugh at human nature and compassion! Be you a man, not a wolf, a devourer of the human species! Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy! 5. And this equally concerns every gentleman that has an estate in our Amercan plantations; yea, all slave holders, of whatever rank and degree; seeing men buyers are exactly on a level with men stealers. Indeed you say, "I pay honestly for my goods; and I am not concerned to know how they are come by." Nay, but you are; you are deeply concerned to know they are honestly come by. Otherwise you are a partaker with a thief, and are not a jot honester than him But you know they are not honestly come by; you know they are procured by means nothing near so innocent as picking of pockets, house breaking, or robbery upon the highway You know they are procured by a deliberate series of more complicated villainy (of fraud, robbery, and murder) than was ever practised either by Mohammedans or Pagans; in particular, by murders, of all kinds; bv the blood of the innocent poured upon the ground like water. Now, it is your money that pays the merchant, and through him the captain and the African butchers. You therefore are guilty, yea, principally guilty, of all these frauds, robberies, and murders. You are the spring that puts all the rest in motion; they would not stir a step without you; therefore, the blood of all these wretches who die before their time, whether in their country or elsewhere, lies upon your head. "The blood of thy brother" (for, whether thou wilt believe it or no, such he is in the sight of Him that made him) "crieth against thee from the earth," from the ship, and from the waters. O, whatever it costs, put a stop to its cry before it be too late: instantly, at any price, were it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from blood guiltiness! Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, thy lands, are at present stained with blood. Surely it is enough, accumulate no more guilt; spill no more the blood of the innocent! Do not hire another to shed blood; do not pay him for doing it! Whether you are a Christian or no, shew yourself a man! Be not more savage than a lion or a bear! 6. Perhaps you will say, "I do not buy any negroes; I only use those left me by my father." So far is well; but is it enough to satisfy your own conscience? Had your father, have you, has any man living, a right to use another as a slave? It cannot be, even setting Revelation aside. It cannot be, that either war, or contract, can give any man such a property in another as he has in his sheep and oxen. Much less is it possible that any child of man should ever be born a slave. Liberty is the right of every human creature; as soon as he breathes the vital air; and no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature. If, therefore, you have any regard to justice, (to say nothing of mercy, nor the revealed law of God,) render unto all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do unto every one as you would he should do unto you 70 thou God of love, thou who art loving to every man, and whose mercy is over all thy works; thou who art the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and who art rich in mercy unto all; thou who hast mingled of one blood all the nations upon earth; have compassion upon these cutcasts of men, who are trodden down as dung upon the earth! Arise, and help these that have no helper, whose blood is spilt upon the ground like water! Are not these also the work of thine own hands, the purchase of thy Son's blood? Stir them up to cry unto thee in the land of their captivity; and let their complaint come up before thee; let it enter into thy ears! Make even those that lead them away captive to pity them, and turn their captivity as the rivers in the south. O burst thou all their chains in sunder; more especially the chains of their sins! Thou Saviour of all, make them free, that they may be free indeed! The servile progeny of Ham Seize as the purchase of thy blood! London, Feb. 26, 1791. Dear Sir,-Unless the Divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra_mundum, [Athanasius against the world,] I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise, in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the Grandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and dev. ls. But, "if God be for you, who can be against you?" Are all of them together stronger then God? O "he not weary in well doing!" Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it. Reading this morning a tract, wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or out raged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law, in all our colonies, dat the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this! That He who has guided you from your youth up, may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, Your affectionate servant, Tas letter is supposed to have been addressed to Mr. Willberforce, and, as its date showa, was wri tun by Mr. Wesley only four days before his death.—Ed. [of the Methodist Book Rosm.] • The slave laws in our country are nearly the same that they were in Wesley's day. For about the ast 20 years, however, they haren general been growing more and more sppressive. This is ow chiefly to the mcreasing light of the age. The more light there is round the slave, the greater the pres Bare requisite to keep down the upward tendencies of his intellect, as knowledge and slavery are income palla. The searcher after truth this subject is referred to Strouts collection of slave lands. DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION SLAVERY? We must first settle the meaning of the term slavery. "A slave," Bays the law of Louisiana, “is one who is in the power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor: he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong to his master." "He is a chattel personal," says the law of South Carolina, "to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever." It may be added, that he came into this relation (the relation of a thing to an owner) without any fault or consent of his own. This definition of slavery, furnished by law, is a true description of it in fact. This, then, is what we mean by slavery, the being held in the relation of a mere thing to some man. This is the American meaning of the word. And it is in regard to this meaning that we inquire whether the Bible sanctions it. In that comprehensive summary of Bible doctrine called the Ten Commandments, the right of property is recognised and guarded by the prohibition, "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL." This prohibition is of universal application, meaning thou shalt not steal from any body; therefore it presupposes in every man a right to use the products of his own labor, and much more the limbs with which he labors, as he pleases. No man is allowed to take from another his property without his consent. The word steal covers the whole ground of fraud, whether secret or open. Now, it is no matter whether you call slaveholding, as above defined, stealing, or not. It is at war with the doctrine of the eighth commandment, because it destroys in the slave the right of property, which the commandment sacredly guards. It does, by one comprehensive and perpetual process, all which that commandment solemnly prohibits. There is no doubt that I violate the eighth commandment, if, meeting a man upon the highway, I order him to stand and deliver,-if I take his watch and his purse. But those things are perhaps the avails, over and above his food and clothing, of a year's labor. Should I have done less violence to the commandment, if I had met the same man a year sooner, and compelled him to work a year on my farm, feeding and clothing him, to be sure, but taking all the profits? Should I have done less, if I had compelled him to work for life? Should I have done less, if, instead of seizing the man, I had seized his mother before his birth, compelled her to work for me, and laid the claim of absolute ownership to her child as |