"The hills were formed, the fountains opened,

Or the sea with all its roaring multitude of waves ;" and no ordinance of man can in any manner vary or annul them.

I may go farther, and observe, that by the will of the Creator certain subordinate and temporary relations are established among human beings. Among these are the relations of husband and wife, and parent and child. From these relations certain obligations arise, and for the fulfilment of these obligations, God holds the parties individually responsible to him. With these obligations_no other human being has a right to interfere. The laws which God has given respecting them in his word, transcend and overrule and abrogate all counteracting laws of man. Every man is bound to obey these laws which God himself has enacted, nor can any man rightfully present any obstacle to this obedience. I might pursue this subject fur. ther, but I have said enough to illustrate the nature of my belief.

That all these ideas are involved in the conception of a human nature, I think no one can deny. And if this be not denied, I do not perceive how the subject in this view admits of any argument. It is a matter of immediate moral consciousness. I know and feel that by virtue of my creation, I possess such a nature. I feel that the rights which I have described were conferred on me by the immediate endowment of God. I feel that with the exercise of these my rights, no created being can interfere, without doing me an aggravated wrong, and violating the law to which we are both subjected by our Creator. I am sure, my brother, that

you feel all this as keenly as any man alive. You feel it, not by virtue of any constitution of government, or any enactment of civil law, but simply and truly because you are a man. And is not every other man, for precisely the same reason, endowed with the same rights, and is not the violation of these rights as great a wrong in his case as in either yours or my own?

To present this subject in a simple light. Let us suppose that your family and mine were neighbors. We, our wives and children, are all human beings in the sense that I have described, and, in consequence of that common nature, and by the will of our common Creator, are subject to the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Suppose that I should set fire to your house, shoot you as you came out of it, and seizing upon your wife and children, "oblige them to labor for my benefit, without their contract or consent." Suppose, moreover, aware that I could not thus oblige them, unless they were inferior in intellect to myself, I should forbid them to read, and thus consign them to intellectual and moral imbecility. Suppose should measure out to them the knowledge of God on the same principle. Suppose I should exercise this dominion over them and their children as long as I lived, and then do all in my power to render it certain that my children should exercise it after

me.

The question before us I suppose to be simply this, would I, in so doing, act at variance with the relations existing between us as creatures of God? Would I, in other words, violate the su preme law of my Creator, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, or that other, Whatsoever ye

would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them? I do not see how any intelligent creature can give more than one answer to this question. Then I think that every intelligent creature must affirm that to do this is wrong, or, in the other form of expression, that it is a great moral evil. Can we conceive of any greater?

Again, suppose my neighbor offers me money, and I, for the sake of this money, transfer some of these children to him, and he proceeds, as I did before him, to oblige them "to labor for his benefit, without their contract or consent;" and takes all the means, as before stated, which shall enable him to exercise this power. Does this transfer of money from him to me in any respect modify the relations which exist between him and them, as creatures of God, or abolish that law by which God has ordained that all our actions towards each other shall be governed? They are the same human beings, possessing the same human nature, and they stand in the same relations to God and to each other as before. The transfer of silver from him to me neither makes one party more nor the other party less than human beings; hence their actions are to be judged of by precisely the same rule as if no such transfer had been made. Hence I cannot resist the conclusion that the act in question is, as before, wrong; and that slavery, with this modification, is again, as before, a moral evil."

I will offer but one more supposition. Suppose that any number, for instance, one half of the families in our neighborhood, should agree to treat the other half in the manner that I have described.

Suppose we should by law enact that the weaker half should be slaves, that we would exercise over them the authority of masters, prohibit by law their instruction, and concert among ourselves the means for holding them permanently in their present situation. In what manner would this alter the moral aspect of the case?

A law, in this instance, is merely a determination of the stronger party to hold the weaker party in bondage; and a contract with each other, by which their whole power is pledged to each individual, so far as it shall be necessary, in order to enable him to hold in bondage his portion of the weaker party.

Now I cannot see that this in any respect changes the nature of the parties. They remain, as before, human beings, possessing the same intellectual and moral nature, holding the same relations to each other and to God, and still under the same unchangeable law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. By the act of holding a man in bondage, this law is violated. Wrong is done, moral evil is committed. In the former case it was done by the individual; now it is done by the individual and the society. Before the formation of this compact, the individual was responsible only for his own wrong; now he is responsible both for his own, and also, since he is a member of the society, for all the wrong which the society binds itself to uphold and render perpetual.

The Scriptures frequently allude to the fact, that wrong done by law, that is, by society, is amenable to the same retribution as wrong done by the individual. Thus, Psalm xciv. 20-23:

"Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frame mischief by a law, and gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood? But the Lord is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge. And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off." So also Isaiah x. 1-4: "Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?

Without

me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." Besides, persecution for the sake of religious opinion is always perpetrated by law; but this in no manner affects its moral character.

There is, however, one point of difference, which arises from the fact that this wrong has been established by law. It becomes a social wrong. The individual, or those who preceded him, may have surrendered their individual right over it to the society. In this case it may happen that the individual cannot act as he might have acted if the law had not been made. In this case the evil can only be eradicated by changing the opinions of the society, and thus persuading them to abolish the law. It