formed or uttered, with a view to any office which the people can bestow; and I have no inducements to flatter the multitude, nor any special reasons to fear their deafening noise. This is more, than many a member of our national council can say with truth.

And when my unknown correspondent very politely suggests, that I must remember that I am nothing more than a country parson, I have the pleasure of telling him that I wish for nothing more. There is not a class of men on earth, to which I would rather belong than to this one; which, however, he evidently means to depreciate. There is not on earth a more honorable employment than theirs; nor is there a class of men more useful, more honorable in the best sense of the word, more pious, or more patriotic than they. Let my lot be with theirs, and heaven knows that I shall deem it "a goodly heritage."

But we must, for the present, dismiss these themes, in order to come to the most solemn and important part of all that I have to discuss, viz., The attitude in which the radical principles of Christianity now place slavery.

I shall be very brief; for all that I wish to quote from the records of Christianity may be written on the palm of one's hand. I need, and shall quote, only four texts.

Matt. 22: 39. And the second [great commandment] is: THOU SHALT LOVE

THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF.

Matt. 7: 12. WHATSOEVER YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOULD do to YOU, DO

YE EVEN SO TO THEM.

Acts 17: 26. [God] hath made of one blood alL NATIONS OF MEN, FOR

TO DWELL ON ALL THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

Rom. 3: 29. Is He The God of the JEWS ONLY? IS HE NOT ALSO OF THE GENTILES? YES, OF THE GENTILES also.

To these I might add a very significant text in Eph. 2: 14: "For he [Christ] is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us,” i. e. between Jews and Gentiles.

These then are the texts, from which I entreat my friends and brethren of the South to let me deliver a short discourse in their hearing.

Christ has declared all men to be our neighbors. We are to love them as ourselves. Love to ourselves is permitted, (not selfishness), and it is taken for granted that we shall exercise it. If we do our

whole duty, we shall as sincerely desire the happiness and prosperity of our neighbor, as we do our own, and refrain from everything that will interfere with it.

Our second text is an excellent commentary on the first, and shows how the proper love of our neighbor will develop itself, when reduced to practice. It is as plain as any commentary can possibly make it, and needs not a word of explanation.

I solemnly invite now my friends and fellow citizens to ponder on these texts. It is impossible for any man to say, that he does as he would be done by, in case he subjects his neighbor, a human being, to slavery. This is not cannot be loving our neighbor, or doing as we would be done by. Is there a man in all the South, who is a voluntary holder of slaves, or trafficker in them, who can lay his hand on his heart, and look up to heaven, and, appealing to the God of love and justice who reigns there, say: I am doing to others as I would be done by, when I compel my fellow beings to labor all their lives for my ease and comfort, without any reward or even a hope of remuneration? Is there one, in that position, who can sincerely say, that he loves his neighbor as himself, when he degrades him from the rank of a human being, and places him in the rank of goods and chattels; when he cuts off all hope of rising to the possession of any property, or of acquiring any education, or of sustaining even the sacred relations of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister? There is not a man in all the South, (that believes there is a God and a Bible of sacred authority), who would dare to say this, in presence of that God who is no respecter of persons. This is enough. This test is better than a thousand arguments, and I solemnly and affectionately invite all men, who expect soon to appear before the tribunal of Eternal Justice, to put themselves to this test.

Will it be said, by any, that the African is not a proper man, but an inferior species of animal between a monkey and a man, and therefore we may enslave him, as we do the lower animals? If so, (and this has often been said), then does our third text directly contradict this: GOD HAS MADE of one blood. Besides, Paul has elsewhere declared in the most explicit manner, that by the offence of Adam all men were made sinners, (Rom. 5: 19); also that in Adam all have died, (1 Cor. 15: 22). There is one God, one Mediator, one Sanctifier of all. Even if the Scriptures had not decided

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the point of homogeneous origin, nature speaks it out, in very intelligible language. It is an irreversible law of nature, that different species cannot amalgamate and form a new one, to which the law of continual propagation attaches. But men of all classes and colors can and do commingle and propagate. Beyond this, facts demonstrate the thing in question. The Jews in Malabar are black; in China, Tartarian; in Palestine and its neighborhood, of olive hue; in Germany and the north of Europe, they commonly have a white delicate skin, and light hair with blue eyes. Climate changes pyramidal skulls to elliptical ones, woolly hair to long Caucasian hair. The hair on the heads of the negro, is real hair, and not wool, as chemistry demonstrates. These facts are all certain; and being so, they prove that the difference of races is occasioned by climate and adventitious causes, and not by diversity of origin.

I take it that Pritchard, and his Reviewer in the Edinburgh Quarterly, and Balbi, and Adelung, and Mr. Owen of the British Museum, have placed the question about the unity of the human race, as to origin, on a foundation never to be shaken. I have seen, indeed, with deep regret, an opinion of Prof. Agassiz diverse from this, as announced at the late literary meeting in Charleston, S. Carolina. No one more highly respects his talents and skill, than myself. But with the Bible in my hands, and as a believer of its teachings, it is absolutely impossible for me to accede to his views. They are not indeed like those mentioned above, in one very important respect. They do not degrade any portion of men below proper humanity; and this is probably the salvo in the mind of the Professor, which keeps him from feeling that he is arrayed against the Bible. The decisive manner in which he has spoken out against the transmutation theory of the author of Vestiges of the Creation, and of the impossibility of one genus passing into another, shows that he is no atheist. May I respectfully solicit, that he would investigate the Sacred Record with as much impartiality and candor and thoroughness as he has the Book of Nature? If he should, I feel certain that he would come to no other conclusion than that stated above, and defended by comparative anatomists of the highest rank. Most assuredly the Bible must be ignored, by any one who concludes that there is a diversity of origin among the human race.

The intellectual and moral constitution of mankind establishes a unity of the race beyond all reasonable question. There is no per

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ceptible difference, excepting that which circumstances have brought about, between black, and yellow, and white, and red men. Were not such men as Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, and Cyprian, and Athanasius, and Arius, and Jerome, and Augustine, and others like them, Africans? Not Guinea negroes indeed, but still with hair and skin approaching somewhat near to theirs. And were not the Jews of the yellow-brown hue? Yet intellect springs up in nearly equal measures, wherever it is cultivated and called forth. And as to all the sympathies of father and mother, husband and wife, brother and sister, they are everywhere the same, when equally cultivated. But what is the most decisive of all, is, there is the same moral sense, the same perception of good and evil, the same conscience, the same fear of the wrath to come, the same feeling of the necessity of forgiveness, the same hopes of eternal blessedness, the same God and Father, the same Redeemer, and the same Sanctifier. If all these in common do not denote a common origin and unity of the race, I do not know how anything of this nature can be proved. And if all this be true, then, for one part of mankind to enslave another, stands on the simple ground of might prevailing over right. Neither the law of love, nor doing as we would be done by, permits any man to act on such a ground, and be guiltless before God.

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But we will, for a moment, look at the other unbiblical, if not antibiblical, theory. It maintains that the Caucasian race are superior in origin as well as talent. Be it so, for argument's sake. Then where is the liberality, the generosity, the kindness of the stronger, in oppressing and degrading the weaker? It seems as if all these virtues were calling upon the stronger, to treat the weaker and degraded with all possible kindness and tenderness, and to make all practicable effort to elevate them in the scale of civilization and refinement. This is what the gospel demands. It is what Jesus came down from heaven to accomplish; and that same divine Lord and Master requires all his disciples to walk in his steps.

No principle of Christianity can ever be violated with impunity. Heaven has ordained that the way of transgressors should be hard. Accordingly, the evils of slavery develop themselves in a manner not to be mistaken. Let us cast but a single glance upon them, and it may suffice for our present purpose.:

(1) It is a glaring contradiction of the first and fundamental principle, not only of the Bible which declares that all are of one

blood, but of our Declaration of Independence, which avers, that all men are born with an inherent and inalienable right to life, liberty, and property. The South have unanimously subscribed this, as well as the North.

(2) As existing among us, slavery has taken its worst form; it degrades men made in the image of their God and Redeemer, into brute-beasts, or (which makes them still lower) converts them into mere goods and chattels.

(3) In this form of slavery, all the sacred social relations of life are destroyed. Husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, are not known in law, nor protected nor cognized by it. In conformity with this, these relations are every day severed by some slave-dealers, without regard to the feelings of the wretched beings who are torn asunder; and all their parental, conjugal, and filial sympathies are the subject of scorn if not of derision. No invasion of human rights can be worse than this; none more directly opposed to the will of God, inscribed upon the pages of the Scriptures, and on the very nature of mankind.

(4) As the inevitable consequence of this, the mass of slaves must live, and do live, in a virtual state of concubinage; which, so far from being restrained, is often encouraged for the sake of increasing slave-property.

(5) Ignorance profound, and nearly universal, is the inevitable lot of the great mass of all who are held in bondage. In some of the States, the learning even to read is forbidden; thus contravening, with a high hand, the command of Heaven to "search the Scriptures." In such a case, obedience to a human law is crime; it is treason against the Majesty of heaven and earth.

(6) The inevitable consequence of all this is, that the young females, ignorant and without a sense of delicacy implanted and cherished, are at the mercy of their masters, young and old. And although the accusation of universal pollution among the masters of the South, is far from being true, yet one cannot walk the streets of any large town or city in a slave-holding State, without seeing such a multitude of mulattos, mestitzos, quadroons, etc., as proves, beyond all possible question, a widely diffused profligacy and licentiousness. It is in vain to deny it. There they are, stamped by heaven with the indelible marks of their polluted origin—a spectacle which might make the sun to blush as he looks down upon them. I know