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DISCOURSE 
 
 THE TRUE NATURE 
 
 FKEEDOM AND SLAVERY. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE WASHINGTON SOCIETY 
 
 THE NEW JERUSALEM, 
 
 IN VIEW OF THE 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 WASHINCITON'S BIRTH. 
 
 RICHARD DE CHARMS, 
 
 AN ORDAINING JIINISTEK OF THE SEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: . , 
 
 J. H JONES, PRINTER, 21 CARTER'S ALLEY. 
 
 1850. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Those who heard this discourse delivered, will hardly recognize it 
 in its printed form. The author rarely speaks his sermons precisely 
 as, he has written them. Influx is proportioned to efflux. Good or 
 ill reception in an audience wonderfully opens or shuts up a public 
 speaker's mind. And he has found new trains of thought suggested 
 in the pulpit, which had never presented themselves in the study ; 
 or written thoughts have widely expanded, or run in varied channels, 
 in delivery; according to the auditory 's peculiar states of receptivity. 
 In the present instance, he was led repeatedly into extemporaneous 
 remarks, which, evaporating with the heat of somewhat fervid feeling, 
 it has been impossible for him to recal in the cooler and calmer mo- 
 ments of reflection since. Yet he has wished to present at least the 
 substance of those extemporaneous remarks in the printed discourse : 
 and as prolixity is not so objectionable in one that is to be read as in 
 one that is spoken, he has greatly extended what he said in answer to 
 the senatorial argument against african slavery in this country being 
 an evil. He has also put in those parts of the written discourse which 
 had to be omitted for want of time. And he has added a few bottom 
 notes. Moreover, he has printed the discourse on pica instead of small 
 pica type, as he proposed in his circular for subscriptions. These causes 
 have a good deal swelled its size and altered its form ; but he trusts it 
 will not be less acceptable on that account. 
 
 Something may be said respecting the occasion for writing this dis- 
 course. The author had been several times asked, by a most worthy 
 and valued member of our church in South Carolina, for his opinion 
 on the propriety of a Newchurchman's holding slaves and continuing 
 to reside in a slave state in violation of conscientious scruples. This 
 led him to canvass the subject of slavery in his own mind for a good 
 while. Subsequently removing from Pennsylvania to Maryland, a 
 slave state, and residing in Baltimore upwards of five years, he had 
 his attention again called to this subject by further correspondence 
 with his southern friend. And the w^ide-spread agitation of the slavery 
 question during the few past years, splitting up as it did some of the 
 leading denominations of the old christian church, and thus giving 
 it an imposing ecclesiastical and religious aspect, made him feel it his 
 duty to discourse on this subject to his own congregation. This ex- 
 plains why he attempts to show the duty of Newchurchraen in regard 
 to slavery. It also displays the reason of his w^ishing to show the 
 true nature of freedom, and the essential and abiding influence which 
 the principles of the new and true christian church, called the New 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 Jerusalem, must exert for the perpetuity of our national existence and 
 the preservation of our country's liberties. The discourse was written 
 as a sermon and first preached in Baltimore, Sunday, March the 4th, 
 1849. The writer, having to travel for his health in the autumn of 
 last year, was providentially led, by a sort of lot, to preach this ser- 
 mon in Lancaster, Penn., also, on Sunday the 16th of September last. 
 And in his recent visit to Washington City, for the purpose of ordain- 
 ing the Rev. Rufus Dawes into the first grade of our ministry, he was 
 induced, by the present most momentous agitation of the slavery ques- 
 tion in that city, to preach it the third time there. The debates in 
 Congress, which he attended for about a week, so enlisted his thoughts 
 and affections in the all-engrossing subject, that he felt constrained 
 by an afflatus numine to discourse upon it. Indeed, on leaving Bal- 
 timore, an internal dictate urged him to take this sermon with him, 
 that he might have it at hand, if circumstances should indicate the 
 duty or the propriety of its delivery. Circumstances did indicate 
 both the duty and the propriety of this ; and it was delivered as a dis- 
 course, a good deal altered or modified — some parts entirely re- 
 written and others variously improvided — for the occasion. 
 
 But why was it delivered in view of the anniversary of Washington's 
 birth? We know now that the grand era of the establishment of 
 all human freedom was the last judgment, which was effected in the 
 world of spirits in 1757. We also know that, in the divine economy, 
 civil and political freedom is first established on earth, as the plain or 
 ground- work of spiritual and religious freedom. And we cannot 
 doubt that the american revolution, and the independence of these 
 United States, were an outbirth of the last judgment, and have desig- 
 nated North America as a conspicuous field for the especial flourishing 
 of a new and true church. Equally manifest is it that George Wash- 
 ington was especially raised up as the agent of heaven, and his war 
 sword was made heaven's especial representative instrument, in those 
 battlings of true and false principles, by which arbitrary power was 
 made to quail, human rights were asserted, and man's universal liberties 
 established on a wide and all-enduring basis. Now, on the Thursday 
 preceding the Sunday on which this discourse was delivered — that is, 
 on the day preceding the 22d of February last, the recent anniversary 
 of Washington's birth — the author visited the patent office building, 
 and, lingering around the cabinet which exhibits to Americans certain 
 most precious relics of the father of their country, saw, among other 
 mementoes of his miUtary life, "Washington's War Sword." The 
 scabbard of this, just under the hilt, has a silver ferrule with these 
 initials and date coarsely engraved (perhaps by Washington's own 
 hand) upon it — "G W 1757" None but a receiver of the writer's 
 faith can conceive how his feeling-s thrilled at this slo;ht. Nor can 
 any other imagme how this seemmgly superstitious circumstance, 
 and the reflections to which it gave rise in his mind, should have 
 almost wholly determined him, both to deliver this discourse in Wash- 
 ington City, and to deliver it in commemoration of Washington's birth. 
 
A DISCOURSE 
 
 FREEDOM AND SLAVERY 
 
 John, viii. 32-36. 
 
 ^'And ye shall know the truth; a7id the truth shall mahe 
 you free. — — Whosoever committeth sin, is the sei'vant 
 of sin. And the servant ahideth not in the house for 
 ever : hut the son ahideth for ever. If the son, there- 
 fore, shall make you free, ye shall he free iyideed.'^ 
 
 There is no word in the great vocabulary of universal 
 language which is so dear to the human heart ^^ freedom ! 
 The cords of the soul which vibrate to its sound, go down 
 the deepest, spread the widest, and thrill the longest. 
 The amount of human suffering and endurance to which 
 the love of it prompts, w^ould be utterly incredible, if the 
 voice of history and all outward observation did not find 
 an echo in the inmost recesses of every human breast — 
 bearing incessant living testimony to the eternal truth. 
 
A D1.S( OIJKSE ON 
 
 " Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"! 
 Certain it is, there is nothing for which all true men will 
 peril more, or strive harder, than to gain their liberties or 
 secure their rights. The very stuff of their immortal 
 nature is woven, in every filament, from the fundamental 
 principle, that " man is made to act in freedom according 
 to reason." Hence, there is no subject more generally 
 interesting than human freedom in contrast with human 
 slavery. And yet there is hardly any subject, at the 
 present time, wdiich seems to be so imperfectly understood. 
 It cannot, therefore, be amiss in us, who are so proud of 
 our political liberties, and profess to be so abhorrent of 
 slavery, to discern rightly wdiat is the true nature of both, 
 and, by all and every efficient means, secure the one and 
 get rid of the other. And no occasion can be so appro- 
 priate to the consideration of this subject, as the anniver- 
 sary commemoration of that auspicious day which ushered 
 into being the father of our country. For if ever, under 
 Divine Providence, there was any mortal man entitled to 
 stand forth, and be regarded, in all coming ages, as the 
 peculiar type of civil and political freedom, or the great 
 and wise advocate of all human enfranchisement, it was 
 George Washington ! 
 
 The Lord, in the text before us, most clearly indicates 
 the source of both slavery and freedom. " Whosoever 
 committeth sin is the servant of sin:" and ''if the son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The source 
 of slavery is the commission of sin : the source of freedom 
 is the practice of truth. 
 
 It is a very common impression in the present day, that 
 the holding of human beings in involuntary or forced 
 bondage is sm. Few are disposed to deny that it is an 
 evil. Until this last visit to Washington City we had 
 imagined that there were not any so disposed. But we 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 7 
 
 liave just heard it argued, in the senate of the United 
 States, that african slavery is positively a civil and poli- 
 tical blessing, and no evil at all. The argument is, that 
 the African in our slave states is better clad and fed than 
 he was or would have been in his native land, or than the 
 poor Avhite man is in the northern states. If he is sick, 
 his master affords him the best medical attendance ; and 
 in the decrepitude of old age, he is comfortably provided 
 with shelter, raiment and food, without taxing his off- 
 spring with the heavy burden of his support. The Great 
 Saviour has declared — as if to show a plain for the exer- 
 cise of the highest christian virtues— " The ^joor ye have 
 always with you." But a strong argument in favor of 
 african slavery in this country now is, that it excludes 
 all poverty, and all possibility of pauperism, in the South. 
 We hear the exultation. There never was, there is not 
 now, and there never will be such a thing as a poor neo-ro 
 in that quarter of our country ! A glowing contrast is 
 drawn between black slavery in the South and the white 
 slavery which grinding poverty produces in the North : 
 and it is triumphantly exclaimed, Such a thing as white 
 girls laboring in a northern factory and laying by their 
 earnings for the support and comfort of their aged mothers, 
 was never heard of in the slave states ! True : and is 
 filial piety, or maternal love, those most loved and lovely 
 features of free, upright and godlike humanity, as promi- 
 nent and beautiful in the black females of the South as 
 in the white females of the North? How do the blacks 
 compare with the whites of the South in this respect ? 
 Are slave mothers more remarkable for maternal tender- 
 ness, or slave daughters for filial assiduity ? Nay, is it not 
 the greatest evil of slavery that it mars true humanity in 
 the subjects of it? All human virtues are developed 
 and strengthened by exercise. Human virtue, like the 
 
A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 best steel, takes on the brightest polish from the hardest 
 friction of contrary substance. Nor can there be any 
 other satisfactory reason assigned why a good and mer- 
 ciful God should permit poverty, sickness, pain, misery, 
 or any other form of natural evil, to exist, but that it is 
 the sole and indispensable means of working out, by the 
 healthful exercising of its affliction, that " far more ex- 
 ceeding weight of glory" which shines from the most 
 resplendent spiritual virtues. 
 
 Suppose we grant, then, for argument, that the poor 
 double-tasked hard-working white factory girl is in a less 
 desirable physical condition — which is by no means "un- 
 questionable— than the fat glistening tow or linsey clad 
 and pork and corn fed negro, yet the latter cannot possi- 
 bly have so perfectly formed in him those sweet and 
 lovely features of humanity which become prominent in 
 the bolder relief of the more fully developed filial and 
 maternal affections. As you know, we once visited a 
 city of South Carolina to institute a society of our church 
 there. While in Charleston, we learned that the little 
 neo-roes are much addicted to eatins; dirt. This habit 
 generates a disease which is very fatal to them. And, 
 much to our astonishment, we were credibly informed, 
 that, if the whites did not give their own most assiduous 
 personal care and attention to these little negroes, they 
 would inevitably die from neglect of their black mothers! 
 To such a des^ree do the maternal affections seem to have 
 been blunted by slavery in the South ! And as to the mo- 
 tive which most strongly prompts the whites to take care 
 of their slaves in this case, we may see it in the words of 
 our informant — "We are obliged to do it, sir, to preserve 
 our property ! " Doubtless, many slaveholders, under the 
 influences of the christian religion, do perform acts of 
 kindness to their slaves from higher ])rinciples than this. 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 9 
 
 But forced bondage is not an institution of pure Chris- 
 tianity. This was a misty cloud, hanging- densely and 
 dankly over the fair face of nature, w^hich " the Sun of 
 Righteousness, v^^ith healing in his wings," arose to dis- 
 perse. The service of the Lord is perfect freedom. The 
 service of man is constrained obeisance to arbitary self- 
 will. And the influences of Christianity upon slavehold- 
 ers, therefore, are rainbow tints of spiritual grace pro- 
 jected on a dark cloud of natural passion. In short, 
 slavery is an institution of the natural man, who is go- 
 verned by the loves of exercising power and possessing 
 wealth. In the activity of the former of these passions, 
 one portion of the human race are made slaves to another ; 
 and in the activity of the latter, the slaves are taken care 
 of from cupidity rather than benevolence. 
 
 It was our own good or bad fortune to live some six years 
 in a slave state, and we are not wholly wanting in that 
 knowledge of the institution of slavery, which personal 
 observation and experience of its nature and tendencies 
 afford. Now no observation is more common than that 
 the masters suffer constant anxiety on account of the great 
 carelessness of their slaves in taking care of their own 
 health. They have no sole interest in the fruits of their 
 own labor. The ordinary impulses of self-love, there- 
 fore, do not constrain their observance of reason's dictate, 
 to preserve a sound body as the vehicle and instrument 
 of a sound mind. The force of religious sentiment, or of 
 gratitude for kindnesses received, in supplying the want 
 of these natural motives by spiritual incentives to work, 
 is rare — by no means universal. Slavery stabs the vitals 
 of humanity here. The slave, as such, is constantly prone 
 to find excuses for not working — to go lazily to the field, 
 and to run with alacrity from it for any sort of pleasurable 
 relaxation. It is a singular fact, that slaves rarely go 
 
10 A DISCOURSE OX 
 
 to their morning corn fields in entire singing groups. 
 They more frequently straggle thither singly or in 
 small and silent squads. It is only Avhen their day's 
 work is done, and they are returning home in the set- 
 ting sun's refracted yellow ray, or the bland and mel- 
 low twilight of quiet eventide, that their harmonious 
 refrain, or happy choral song, is heard ! It is only in 
 corn-husking labor that frost gemmed and star bespan- 
 gled nig-ht is far and wide made vocal with the fervid 
 tones of joyous revelry! To such work as this — to work 
 that involves his own pleasure— the slave does indeed 
 hie with alacrity. But to work that involves only his 
 master's interest, he too often directs nought but reluctant 
 steps. And he often regards even sickness as relaxation 
 from toil. Hence he some times feigns sickness, and 
 rarely takes the remedies for those slight indispositions, 
 which, if neglected in their early stages, frequently ter- 
 minate in fatal maladies. Consequently, the master has 
 to keep a constant and anxious watch over his slaves, to 
 guard them from unnecessary exposures to sickness — to 
 see that they take their medicines when they are sick — 
 to assure both them and himself of the fact, which the 
 slaves themselves are somehow very slow to perceive, 
 that they are well enough to return to work — and to take 
 much other solicitous care to secure himself from both 
 the loss of their labor and the loss of their lives. A fact 
 within our own knowledge strikingly illustrates this cir- 
 cumstance of slavery. During our residence in Frank- 
 fort, Kentucky, from 1810 to 1814, Dr. Rush's phleboto- 
 mising theory was in vogue. Then the negroes were 
 every now and then feigning sickness, getting bled, and 
 having an arm in a sling, so as to gain exemption from 
 work and enjoy a holiday. Among them was a fine mu- 
 latto, of great value to his master on account of his skill 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 11 
 
 as a carpenter. The doctors used then to bleed with the 
 spring- lancet. The slave, for reasons best known to him- 
 self as a carpenter, preferred being bled in the right arm. 
 In one of the oft repeated venesections, an "unskilful prac- 
 titioner struck a tendon of the arm instead of, or together 
 with, an artery. Inflammation supervened. And the 
 consequence was, a stiffening and contraction of the right 
 arm. The master, finding his usefulness gone, subjected 
 the slave to a surgical operation. The doctor's shop in 
 which it was performed, was next door to the office in 
 which we were employed. We witnessed the operation; 
 and never shall we forget the poor mulatto's groans and 
 exclamations of agony ! The physician — not a regular 
 surgeon — failed to restore the arm. And the master, who 
 would not have taken one thousand dollars for him pre- 
 viously, sold his slave, for a comparatively trifling price, 
 a cripple for life ! 
 
 Yes, the master of the black slave has to physic him 
 well in sickness, and also feed and clothe him well, and 
 every way take care of him, in health. The master's 
 interest lies in this. He is as much bound to take care of 
 this species of his property as of any other. Nay, he 
 owes to this species more care in proportion to its greater 
 value. And if he takes care of his slave when he has 
 become valueless, — as the king of Prussia did of his fa- 
 vorite superannuated war horses, — or if he extends to his 
 slaves, of all ages and at all times, the various kindnesses 
 of a benevolent and beneficent masterdom, it is but an- 
 other evidence that the Lord of Mercy has permitted even 
 the evil of slavery to exist for the exercise and develop- 
 ment of high virtues in the slaveholder. And this is pre- 
 cisely our view of it. But it is still an evil. It is an evil 
 civilly, politically, morally and spiritually considered. 
 We admit it is not a physical evil in respect to african 
 
12 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 slavery in this countrj, considered relatively to the con- 
 dition of the negroes in Africa before they were captured, 
 sold and deported as slaves. For we know that canni- 
 balism reigned in Africa then, and that the wretched 
 victims of victorious war would have been butchered, 
 roasted, and eaten by their savage captors, if Providence 
 had not mercifully snatched them, as brands from the 
 burning, and permitted the slave trade to waft them to a 
 civilized clime. Undoubtedly, then, the negro's phy- 
 sical condition is bettered here. And, as we shall show 
 in this discourse, Africans were permitted, by the Divine 
 Providence, to be brought hither as slaves for the purpose 
 of bettering their moral and intellectual condition also. 
 But this is the work of an overruling providence, which 
 is "ever from" actual as well as " seeming evil still educ- 
 ing good, in endless progression," and is not the effect of 
 any inherent property or quality of slavery. 
 
 In answer, then, to the argument above noticed, we 
 say, slavery is not, in our view, so much objected to on 
 account of its being a physical evil to the black man, as 
 on account of its being a civil, political, moral and spirit- 
 ual evil to the Avhite man.. We do indeed think that 
 slavery, in its owm specific tendencies, is also a physical 
 evil to the blacks, considered relatively to their possible 
 elevation as a race. For we know that the affections of 
 the soul impart their forms and qualities to the blood, the 
 flesh, and even the bones of tiie body. Medical men well 
 know the influence of moral causes in producing and 
 curing disease. A fit of choler not unfrequently produces 
 the jaundice. A mother, suckling her infant while her 
 soul was upheaved from its deepest dregs by the tumul- 
 tuous emotions of jealousy, has caused it to die in con- 
 vulsions. The passion of her soul imparted its virulent 
 qualities to her milJv and poisoned her offspring ! The 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 13 
 
 affections of an animal, too, give their quality to its flesli. 
 The major part of a small village has been sickened by 
 eating the beef of a maddened and hamstrung ox, killed 
 in a fever, and sent to the shambles surcharged with its 
 poisonous effects. All know how much the flesh of wild 
 animals differs from that of tame. How much the meat 
 on the breast of a wild turkey differs from that of a tame 
 turkey's breast! The venison of a deer raised in a park 
 is almost mutton in comparison with the venison of a deer 
 roaming and bounding free through the wild woods.* 
 Who has not observed the superior quality of hams made 
 from mast-fed hogs fattened at last on corn, in compari- 
 son with those made from stye-raised hogs? And what 
 produces the difference? Is it not, that the affection of 
 the animal roaming free in the enjoyment of its delights 
 gives better properties to its flesh than can be found in 
 the lazy and grunting obesity of stye-raised meat? And 
 shall not the whole soul of freedom give a peculiar pro- 
 perty to the very flesh of a freeman, wdiile the stooped 
 spirit of forced bondage imparts an equally marked 
 though different characteristic quality to the very flesh 
 of the slave ? So of the forms of the body, and the con- 
 tour of the face. Freedom and slavery has each its pe- 
 culiar type. And not more does the full blooded racer, 
 in comparison with the mongrel dray horse, show the 
 qaality of his free spirit in his form and action, than does 
 freedom show itself in the forms and habitual actions of 
 the white and red man, while slavery stamps its signet 
 in the black wax, or carves its peculiar form in the ebony, 
 of the bondaged and drudging African. Hence we verily 
 believe that the little negro's propensity to eat dirt is both 
 the effect and the evidence of slavery's being a physical 
 
 * " The hind is an animal of the forest, loving liberty more than any other 
 animal." (A. C. 6113.) 
 
14 A DISCO UIi«E ON 
 
 evil. And how it is a moral evil, is shown by its dehu- 
 manizing or unhumanizing effects on the little negro's 
 mother. 
 
 But that slavery is a civil and spiritual, as well as a 
 physical and moral, evil to the black man, is manifest 
 from some of its other peculiar and distinctive unhuman- 
 izing effects. The most peculiar human principle — that 
 which makes man most like God — is the faculty of pre- 
 vidence and providence. By this, man looks ahead, and 
 provides in the present for the wants, the comforts and 
 the pleasures of the future. Now slavery puts the axe 
 to this root of humanity, by making the slave improvi- 
 dent. The necessities of his condition do not develope 
 this faculty in him by exercise. His master foresees and 
 provides for him. He thus learns to live from hand to 
 mouth. And hence, although he multiplies his species 
 more rapidly as a slave, and enjoys a superior elevation 
 of character while under the magnetic sphere and pro- 
 tecting aegis of his white owner, yet he becomes incapa- 
 citated to bear the weightier responsibilities, and dis- 
 charge the higher duties, that would devolve on him as 
 himself a freeman. So that, when african slavery is 
 precipitately abolished, without a proper qualification of 
 the slave for freedom, in a previous and gradual deve- 
 lopment of this truly human principle of previdence and 
 providence, the blacks generally decrease in numbers, 
 deteriorate in character, and become less felicitous in 
 physical condition. Observation and experience in the 
 northern states — especially in Pennsylvania — prove the 
 truth of this remark. So that, while the African remains 
 thus a slave, his condition is, undoubtedly, better as such 
 than it would be if he were suddenly manumitted in this 
 country. But, as far as humanity is concerned, this 
 effect of slavery upon the African, proves it to be an evil. 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 15 
 
 And that it is civilly and politically such, every rightly 
 observant and acutely discerning man, who, in descend- 
 ing the Ohio river, studies the different aspects of the 
 state of Ohio on the one side, and of the states of Virgrinia 
 and Kentucky on the other, must he satisfied. That it 
 is an evil to the African permitted here for the ultimate 
 greater good of his race elsewhere, we believe and admit. 
 Still, it is an evil — a moral, civil and political evil — to him 
 here. And that slavery, as it now actually exists in the 
 South, is a spiritual evil to the black man, is sufficiently 
 evident from the fact, that the preservation of the insti- 
 tution there, compels his master to interdict to him that 
 education, and that action in high functions, which are 
 indispensable for the right development of his immortal 
 powers. 
 
 We argue, then, that slavery is a more especial evil 
 to the whites. No nation or community of intelligent 
 men can force or receive an inferior race of their fellow- 
 men into servile bondage, without virtue going out of 
 them. The superior race inevitably loses a portion of its 
 spiritual caloric by the contact ! The very act of mak- 
 ing a black man his slave, or imperiously holding him as 
 such, is an evil to the white man, because it debases the 
 principle of his action, and so lowers the standard of hu- 
 manity in himself. 
 
 Life in time is a probation for life in eternity. What- 
 ever principles a man acts from in this mundane sphere 
 determine his form and quality in that spritual and celes- 
 tial empyrean which is his soul's proper home. Conse- 
 quently, all true elevation or depression of human charac- 
 ter must be measured on the scale that marks the inter- 
 vals between the upper and nether extremes of man's 
 spiritual and celestial or sensual and animal natures. 
 And whatever develops and strengthens by exercise the 
 
16 A DISCOURSE OX 
 
 ruling passions of the one, must be formatively and ac- 
 tively evil; and whatever develops and strengthens by 
 exercise the ruling affections of the other, must be for- 
 matively and actively good. Now our argument is, that 
 slavery in the South, so far as its own inherent tendencies 
 are considered, is an evil, because it debases the charac- 
 ter of the poor white man, and makes the white property- 
 holder naturally proud instead of spiritually humble. It 
 generates in the rich white man a haughty chivalry and 
 a proud sense of belligerous honor, instead of a spirit of 
 christian meekness, and that manly forbearance under 
 injury, and persistence in doing good despite of wrong, 
 which characterized that a,ll-perfect type of pure huma- 
 nity the Divine Saviour of the World. 
 
 By nature, man's grand master passion is the love 
 of himself, which pdmarily manifests itself in the delight 
 of exercising dominion over other persons, and second- 
 arily in the delight of possessing all valuable things. 
 For in the possession of these, self expects to secure that 
 respect, deference and service from others, which it loves. 
 To the activity of this master passion, in its two chief 
 forms of love of power and love of wealth, must be as- 
 cribed those false notions of honor, of glory, of fame, ,of 
 adulation, and of respectability in the abject dependence 
 and service of others, which prompt nations to war and 
 conquest, and individuals to overreaching, fraud and 
 oppression. And in the train of these follow all mortal 
 pains and miseries. In short, however men may gild 
 or polish them liy outside and factitious amenities, the 
 love of money is the root, and the love of rule is the sap, 
 of all evil. These passions, then, indigenous to all men in 
 their state by nature, are both essentially and formally 
 evil, whenever they become principles of the mind. A 
 principle of the mind is whatever a man proposes to him- 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERV. 17 
 
 self as the final end of his action. Hence, when a man 
 proposes to himself power and wealth as ends, he acts 
 from evil principles — which are the opposites and anta- 
 gonists of love to God and charity to the neighbor.* But 
 when those principles are, by reformation and regenera- 
 tion, subordinated to these, they become relatively good. 
 In other words, when the love of power and the love of 
 wealth react ordinately on the love of God and the love 
 of the neighbor, so as to serve as means for the attainment 
 of their ends, they partake of the quality of the ends to 
 which they are subservient, and are good and not evil. 
 These natural loves, when separated from those spiritual 
 loves, are like the rod of Aaron when cast from him upon 
 the earth — a crawling venomous serpent : but when sub- 
 ordinate and subservient to them, they are like that ser- 
 pent taken up by Moses — a staff, support or power in the 
 hand of the spiritual man.f 
 
 * " If a man regards self and the world as ends, let him know that he is infer- 
 nal ; but if he regards the good of his neighbor, the general good, the Lord's 
 kingdom, and especially the Lord himself, let him know that he is celestial." 
 (A. C. 1909.) 
 
 " All evils and falsities come from worldly, terrestrial and corporeal loves, 
 when they prevail." (A. C. 10.492.) 
 
 f " Corporeal and sensual things are in themselves merely material, inanimate 
 and dead ; but they are made alive by the delights which come from the interiors 
 in their orderly arrangements. Hence it appears that, according to the quality 
 of the life of the interiors, such is the delightsomeness of pleasures, inasmuch as 
 in delight there is life. The delight wherein there is good from the Lord, is 
 alone a living delight ; for, in such case, it has life from the essential life of good. 
 * * * Some suppose that whosoever wishes to be happy in the other life, 
 ought by no means to live in the pleasures of the body and of sensual things, but 
 to refuse all such enjoyments ; and they urge in favor of this notion, that corporeal 
 and worldly things draw off and detain the mind from spiritual and celestial life. 
 But they who suppose so, and, in consequence thereof, resign themselves up 
 voluntarily to miseries whilst they live in the world, are ignorant of the real truth 
 in the case. It is by no means forbidden any one to enjoy the pleasures of the 
 body and of sensual things, that is to say, the pleasures arising from the posses- 
 sion of lands and money; the pleasures arising from honors and offices in the 
 
 3 
 
18 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 By that reformation and regeneration in which man is 
 gifted with a new nature from the Lord, man's sublime 
 master passion is the supreme love of God, which gene- 
 rates disinterested love to mankind. Love to God is the 
 great right side, and love to mankind is the great left side, 
 which, uniting in the median line of universal usefulness, 
 form the perfect symmetry of divine humanity. These 
 are spiritual, celestial and divine loves, which actuated 
 man in his pristine state or golden age of purity and bliss. 
 And as his fall consisted in his gradually ceasing to act 
 from these, and, in long process of time, coming to act 
 wholly from those natural, sensual and corporeal loves, 
 
 state; the pleasures of eonjugial love, and love towards infants and children; 
 the pleasures of friendship and of social intercourse; the pleasures of hearing, or 
 of the sweetnesses of singing and music ; the pleasures of sight, or of beauties, 
 which are manifold — as handsome raiment, well-furnished houses, beautiful gar- 
 dens, and the like — which things are delightful by reason of the harmony con- 
 tained in them ; the pleasures of smelling, or of the sweetness of odors; the 
 pleasures of taste, or of the agreeableness and usefulness of meats and drinks ; 
 and the pleasures of touch : for these are the extreme or corporeal affections, 
 which have their origin, as Avas said, from the interior affections. The interior 
 affections which are alive, all derive their delight from goodness and truth ; and 
 goodness and truth derive their delight from charity and faith ; and, in this case, 
 from the Lord ; consequently, from the very essential life. Wherefore, the 
 affections and pleasures which have this origin, are alive. And whereas genuine 
 pleasures are from such source, they are never denied to any one : yea, when they 
 are derived from that source, then their delight indefinitely exceeds the delight 
 which is from any other source, and which is respectively filthy and defiled. 
 * * * That the pleasures above mentioned are by no means denied to man, — 
 yea, so far from being denied, that they then first become pleasures when they are 
 derived from their true origin, — may further appear from this consideration, that 
 very many who have lived in the world in power, dignity and opulence, and who 
 enjoyed abundantly all pleasures, both of the body and of the things of sense, are 
 among the blessed and happy in heaven ; and with them the interior delights and 
 happiness are now alive ; because such delights and happiness had their source 
 in the good things of charity and the truths of faith towards the Lord : and, de- 
 riving pleasure from charity and faith towards the Lord, they regard them all 
 with a view to use, which was their end in the enjoyment of them; for it was 
 use itself which was to them most delightful ; and hence came the delight of 
 their pleasures,'' (A. C 995) 
 
FREETJOM AND SLAVERV. 1 <J 
 
 as principles, so his restoration must consist in a free and 
 rational reinversion of his state. In this reinversion, the 
 natural loves of power and wealth are not to be destroyed 
 as absolutely evil, according to the Enthusiasts and Per- 
 fectionists of the Fenelon or Madame Guion school, but 
 are to be put from the centre off to the circumference as 
 evil relatively. While they ordinately react in the cir- 
 cumference on love to God and love to mankind in the 
 centre, they are in order. And it is only when they rush 
 to the centre, so as to shove those heavenly loves to the 
 circumference, that they are in disorder, and thus evil. 
 As, then, these natural loves are good when in order, and 
 only become evil when in disorder, we are enabled to dis- 
 cern the great truth, that all evil is perverted good. 
 
 Discerning thus the nature of a principle and the na- 
 ture of evil, we are brought clearly to see w^hat good is, 
 and what is the principle of good. And as true humanity 
 is good in form and activity, we can also see, most clearly, 
 what elevates, and what depresses, humanity in mankind. 
 By the law of opposites, love to God and charity to the 
 neighbor are good. And the principle of good is man's 
 acting with a final end to good; that is, his doing good 
 for oroodness' sake. " God is love," and " God is liofht." 
 God is goodness itself, and God is truth itself. Hence, 
 to do what is good and true for the sake of goodness and 
 truth, is to love God. ^' Charity is an affection of being 
 serviceable to others, without having respect to any re- 
 compence " — thus is diametrically opposed to selfishness 
 and its domineering and possessing propensities. " The 
 neighbor, towards whom charity is to be exercised, is all 
 in the universe, but still each with discrimination " as to 
 the good that is in him. Thus '• to love the Lord and the 
 neighbor is, in general, to perform uses." And hence the 
 divine lav/, that he is the greatest of all who is the servant 
 
'20 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 of all. The Lord himself came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister. Consequently, the true dignity of hu- 
 manity is to serve ; and the post of true honor is the ren- 
 dering useful services to others. Hence, humanity is 
 elevated by useful service, and depressed by imperious 
 sway. And as the essence of true humanity is the acting 
 '' in freedom according to reason," therefore the most 
 perfect man is he who has the highest intelligence guid- 
 ing the most virtuous will in the most widely extended 
 usefulness to all other men: while the most imperfect 
 man is he who has the lowest intelligence, without any 
 rational will of his own, but is forced to obey the man- 
 dates and subserve the will of some other one man in 
 promoting his interests, just as the mere animal does. 
 Consequently, as that is an evil which depresses huma- 
 nity, african slavery in this country is an evil, because it 
 is the forced or involuntary service of one or a few, rather 
 than the free or voluntary service of all or many. In 
 short, african slavery in this country is an evil, because 
 it tends to make the master more a natural man, and the 
 slave more an animal. 
 
 But we can better state the case thus. Slavery is an 
 evil, because it outrages or mars true humanity in two 
 chief respects. First, it develops and strengthens by 
 exercise the love of dominion from the love of self. Any 
 person who has lived in a slave state, knows this by having 
 observed its effect on the masters' offspring. The little 
 white learns to domineer over the little black, in ordering 
 him about, buffeting him, and making him bend wholly 
 to his will and pleasure as his prospective property. It 
 is seen in the tones of voice, and in every gesture and 
 motion of the body, with which he speaks and acts to the 
 little slave. Hence, as we have before said, comes pride, 
 — which is contempt of others in comparison with self, — 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 21 
 
 a false sense of honor, a most quick proclivity to resent 
 injuries, and a supercilious and anti-christian hantiness 
 to inferiors, which never can be compensated by that ease 
 of manners, and polish of intellectual refinement, in in- 
 tercourse with equals, which exemption from low labor 
 and the appliances of leisure and learning impart to the 
 wealthy slaveholder. We grant that this principle does 
 elaborate from human nature, as now constituted, the 
 higher order of minds in the military and naval profes- 
 sions, or in the executive departments of government. 
 But this is because mankind are now almost wholly na- 
 tural, and require the government of natural passions 
 individually and of natural men collectively. And it is, 
 as we think, the chief evil characteristic of human slavery, 
 that it develops in the masters the natural, in antagonism 
 to the spiritual^ love of rule — which natural love, when 
 not subordinated, is, as we have shown, selfish and worldly, 
 and therefore evil. For " the desire to bear rule is some- 
 what of human proprium different from what is received 
 of the Lord : nevertheless, all [spiritual] rule [such as 
 that of the angels] is of love and mercy witliout a desire 
 to bear rule." (A. C. 1755.) 
 
 Secondly, slavery is an evil, because it makes labor 
 disgraceful. In this respect, it is more especially a civil 
 and political evil. In this respect, it is essentially aris- 
 tocratic and anti-republican. And we will add, it is, in 
 this respect, essentially anti-christian. For, as we have 
 shown, it is the spirit of Christianity to make useful ser- 
 vice honorable, and thus to elevate in the scale of respec- 
 tability the agricultural, commercial and mechanic arts. 
 But it is the direct tendency of slavery to make those 
 professions wdiich enjoy exemption from physical labor 
 the most respectable. The possessor and enjoyer of wealth 
 is always more honorable in slave countries than the 
 
'^'i A DLSCOTIRSE ON 
 
 maker and profitable user of wealth. Now that this is a 
 spiritual evil, in its influences on the church, may he 
 known from the simple fact, that it induced the Jews, in 
 the time of our Lord's first advent, to disparage, if not to 
 reject, him, because he was a carpenter'' s son. And how 
 this disparagement of a man because he pursues a me- 
 chanical calling, or this making labor disgraceful, is a 
 civil and political evil, in its influences on the common- 
 wealth, any discerning man can see at a glance. For 
 instance, in case of the sons of the wealthy, who are not 
 stimulated by ambition to shine in the spheres of literary, 
 professional or political preeminence, and are unfortu- 
 nately more impelled by the natural love of pleasure than 
 by the spiritual love of use, this degradation of labor 
 throws them into the spheres of gambling and dissipation. 
 All heaven is a continent of uses. And so far as men on 
 earth are engaged in doing uses from heavenly ends, they 
 breathe and pulsate with heaven, and have the sphere of 
 heaven around them for their protection from the assaults 
 of vagrant and libidinous spirits. Hence one of the chief 
 safeguards of young men from vice is useful employment. 
 But where useful labor is disreputable, genteel young 
 men are ashamed to engage in it, because they lose caste 
 in such occupation. And the energies of their minds, 
 needing excitement for their pleasurable development, 
 draw them to the race course, the billiard table, the cock 
 pit, the gambling club room, the carousal, or other name- 
 less places of resort, for the killing of time which hangs 
 so heavy on the man who finds life only in the vortices 
 of pleasure or the rounds of fashionable society. As we 
 have seen, when the sensuous things of pleasure, together 
 with games of chance and athletic sports, are occasionally 
 enjoyed as relaxations from useful labor, or unbending 
 recreations of the mind, which enable it to return to its 
 
FKEEUUM AND SLAVERV. 23 
 
 mental avocations with renewed ^igor, they are subser- 
 vient to use, and so useful and proper themselves. But 
 when they are made the sole objects of life, they dissipate 
 all of man's truly virile powers, and destroy or enervate 
 his soul. At least, the exclusive pursuit of them unfits 
 young men for any high service of the commonwealth. 
 And, in this case, the community is injured by the loss 
 of the valuable executive services, of some of her best 
 sons, in stations of high trust and responsible function. 
 So, too, in the case of poor white men and their offspring, 
 the community loses a great fountain of her wealth and 
 prosperity in the absence of that superior quality and 
 richer quantity of productive services, which results from 
 the want of the stimulus of an lionorable calling acting as 
 a premium in drawing out the higher order of agricultural, 
 mechanical, or commercial abilities. As man always 
 stamps the form of his own quality upon his work, be it 
 what it may, how is it possible that the community can 
 be so much enriched or benefited by the productions of de- 
 graded slave labor in agriculture, for example, as by the 
 productions of the dignified labor of men of the higher 
 order of intellectual power and moral worth! 
 
 In view of this, no one need hesitate for a moment in 
 accounting for the fact that capital and population, with 
 their political influence, have increased in a vastly greater 
 ratio in our northern than in our southern states. And 
 most vain is the hypothesis, that, if southern capital had 
 been kept in the South, and not drained from it by tarif 
 restrictions, european imigration would have prevailed 
 more at the South, instead of occurring wholly at the 
 North, so as to have preserved there an equilibrium of 
 political power. For never will free white men, however 
 unpropitious their physical or political condition, migrate 
 to a country where slavery has made their labor disgrace- 
 
24 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 ful and their arts or handicrafts disreputable. White 
 men will indeed go to slave states, and labor in commer- 
 cial or mechanical callings, with a view of getting rich 
 and enjoying their wealth elsewhere, or with a view to 
 become themselves slaveholders, and to acquire the re- 
 spectability which wealth gives, in the South : but this 
 is an exception to the general rule, which only confirms 
 it; for it proves that those callings are disreputable in 
 comparison with slaveholding wealth and otium cum dig- 
 nitate* They never w^ould go thither to pursue those 
 callings with a sole view to the use of them, and to the 
 community's good in their faithful and efficient continued 
 pursuit of them. They never would go thither, if they 
 were sure that they should always remain in those call- 
 ings where their wives and daughters would not be visited 
 by respectable people because their husbands and bro- 
 thers were mechanics. Or the number of such persons 
 migrating to slave states would be very small in compa- 
 rison with the number of them coming to free states. 
 They seldom think of migrating to states where the own- 
 ers of kind stand at the top of the social ladder, and the 
 workers of land are drudging slaves at the bottom; and 
 all rounds for respectahle middle classes are excluded, or 
 
 * It is conceded, that the principles of self-love and love of the world have 
 this same aristocratic tendency every where. Hence, in the free states, they ge- 
 nerate invidious distinctions in society, hy which the members of the common 
 body are arrayed against one another in the most unhappy and some times the most 
 fatal antagonism. They generate an aristocracy of wealth there too ; and also a 
 disparaging estimate of the mechanical callings. But they do not do it there in 
 so great a degree as in slave states ; and we argue that the institution of human 
 slavery, as an exciting or determining cause, has more directly and inevitably this 
 tendency. Whereas Christianity, regarding all professions and callings as uses 
 of one common body which " is not one member, but many," that tend, by their 
 mutual relations and their various adaptations to the common good, to the perfec- 
 tion of the whole, esteems "much more those members of the body, which seem 
 to be more feeble, as necessary : and upon those members of the body, which ice 
 think to be less honorable, she bestows more abundant honor." (I Cor. xii. 12-27. 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 25 
 
 confined to cities and large towns, by this worse than 
 feudalism; and thus where slavery not only disparages 
 mechanical pursuits, but also excludes, in general, from 
 the community, the small landholder, who tills with his 
 oivn hands the soil he owns, and therefore has a more sti- 
 mulating interest in developing the utmost productive 
 powers of the whole land for the greater wealth and pros- 
 perity of the whole body politic. 
 
 The inherent and legitimate effect of slavery is, then, 
 we repeat, to degrade labor in general. Look at its effect 
 on the poor wdiite agriculturalists, who roam through the 
 pine lands that intervallate the sea coast and the moun- 
 tain regions of the Carolinas, and spend more than half 
 their time in fishing or hunting, rather than be yoke-fel- 
 lows with negroes in tilling the soil. Witness the con- 
 tempt which the Bedouin Arab feels for the cultivator of 
 the earth. He only regards him as the eagle does the 
 fish hawdf. The poorest specimens of white humanity 
 that we ever laid our eyes on, were the country people 
 wdio came in with their produce to the Charleston 
 market ! 
 
 But the effect of slavery, in making useful labor disre- 
 putable, is best seen in the slaves' own estimation of those 
 who are obliged to pursue it for a livelihood. It is w^ell 
 known that the slaves look upon the poor v/hites as be- 
 neath them. Even in Maryland, we know how difficult 
 it is for poor whites to get black servants, that are worth 
 having, to work for them. The genteel negroes have an 
 utter contempt for what they call " the poor white trasW ! 
 They would rather starve, and work their fingers to the 
 quick, in the service of white gentility, than live on the 
 fat of the land in the families of those wdiom they esteem 
 disreputable mechanics. This is the fact in general : and 
 it renders more intensive the evidence that slavery makes 
 4 
 
2G A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 labor disgraceful; and therefore is a civil and political 
 evil. Unquestionably, Washington, — whose memory we 
 now essay to honor, — Washington, that bright particular 
 star in the great galaxy of american worthies, and all the 
 greater lights that sparkled in the glorious firmament of 
 our american revolution, thus regarded slavery. Surely, 
 then, we may conclude that slavery is an evil. 
 
 But whether slavery is a 5m, is quite another question. 
 Not a little confusion of ideas seems to prevail in some 
 minds on this subject. Perhaps those who think slavery 
 a sin, mean no more than that it is an evil. There is, 
 however, a material distinction, which is to be observed 
 between these two terms. There is the same distinction 
 between evil and sin that there is between an inclination 
 to do what is wrong and the actual doing it. The chaste 
 and pious Joseph said, on a memorable occasion, " How 
 shall I DO this great evil, and sin against God." This 
 shows that sin is the doing of evil. Evil is that which 
 tempts man. For " every man is tempted when he is 
 drawn of his own lust, and enticed." (James, i. 4.) No 
 man can be enticed by any thing but that which lie loves : 
 for to this the love, which is his veriest life, always in- 
 clines him. And the love of self, which inclines one con- 
 stantly to seek and act for its own interest and gratifica- 
 tion at the expense of every common good, is, as we have 
 shown, essentially evil. This love is the fountain-head 
 of every inordinate natural passion, which the apostle 
 calls lust. Hence, the inclination of lust, which draws 
 away and entices, is evil; and to give way to the inclina- 
 tion — to yield to the enticement, and so to do the evil, is 
 sin. For, as the apostle, John, declares, "sin is the trans- 
 gression of the law." In other words, evil is sin in inti- 
 mate conception, and sin is evil brought forth into life. 
 
 Now, with this discrimination in our eye, we may see 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. -27 
 
 that slavery, though undoubtedly an evil, may not, in all 
 cases, be a sin. Or, if a sin, may be one which the apostle 
 deems "not unto death;" but which may be "prayed 
 for." The apostle declares, " all unrighteousness is sin : " 
 that is, sin consists in all transgression of the divine 
 laws. But, says he, " there is a sin not unto death." 
 Doubtless, the sin which is unto death is voluntary sin ; 
 and that which is not unto death is involuntary. The 
 sin of ignorance is involuntary sin. So is the sin of he- 
 reditary transmission ; so far as it does not become actual 
 evil by one's own irrational volition. Still, both these 
 kinds of involuntary sin, although not unto death, mast 
 occasion to the committer of them some degree of penalty. 
 "The Lord," says the doctrine of our church, "requires 
 no more of a man than that he should do according to 
 w^hat he knows to be true."* Hence the condemnation 
 and fatality of all sin lie in a man's knowing vv^hat is true, 
 and yet willing and acting contrary to it — in "loving 
 darkness rather than light, because his deeds are evil." 
 So that, if a man " knows his Lord's will, and does things 
 w^orthy of stripes, he shall be beaten with many stripes." 
 But " if he knows not his Lord's will, and yet does things 
 worthy of stripes, he shall be beaten \Ai\\fe7v stripes." 
 Li both cases, a penalty is inflicted ; but in the former a 
 heavy, and in the latter a light one. Hence, if slavery 
 be an evil, all wdio are implicated in it — even those who 
 are innocently implicated — must suffer in some degree 
 from it.f But those who do not ](now, or believe, it to be 
 
 * The same doctrine is taught by our church in this form: "Those who 
 know their duty, and not those who are ignorant of it, are the objects of imputa- 
 tion, whether it be of righteousness or of guilt; just as blind men, when they 
 stumble, are no objects of blame ; for the Lord says, ' If ye were blind, ye would 
 have no sin; but now you say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.' John, ix. 
 41." (U. T. 127.) 
 
 f Evil is its own punishment. In the divine economy, the effects of evil are 
 
2S A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 wrong, are not condernnable on account of it as sin. 
 Neither are those guilty sinners, who have had slavery 
 entailed on them by hereditary transmission. But to 
 those who do know, or believe, it to be sinful, the impli- 
 cation of it is indeed a heinous offence both against God 
 and man. For surely no one can doubt, that, while 
 voluntary service, or the service of love and therefore of 
 freedom, is supernal, forced service, or that service which 
 fear renders to imperious masterdom, is infernal. 
 
 Now we cannot believe that slavery in our southern 
 states is heinously sinful. We do indeed believe it is an 
 
 made to react upon it for its own correction. If, therefore, slavery be an evil, as 
 we suppose it is, there must be some evil effects of it, which must, by their 
 reactions, ultimately remove it from the slave states. Pharaoh, whether he be 
 the love of power or the love of wealth, will he plagued until he lets the Children 
 of Africa go! This is not the place to name or describe the plagues by which 
 the divine will in the exodus of the Africans is to be brought about. It is enough 
 to know the counsel of the Almighty, and to yield willing, rational and co-opera- 
 tive acquiescence in his august behest. Perhaps the manifest lagging of the 
 slave states behind the free ones of their political sisterhood in all the race of 
 natural wealth and civil power, will convince them that it is their interest to sub- 
 stitute voluntary for forced labor in developing the resources of their country. 
 Perhaps, in view of the moral workings of their system, and of the political 
 axiom, that the price of our liberties is eternal vigilance, they may feel impelled, 
 by the most powerful of all incentives, to do their own working, as well as their 
 own voting and fighting! But there is one evil effect of slavery in this country, 
 which we ought not to pass unnoticed. It is the civil leprosy — the plague spot 
 on the fair face of our social polity — of a degraded and hybrid race, in a state of 
 quasi freedom, without the power of amalgamation or healthy assimilation in our 
 body politic, but deforming and sickening it by parasitic attachment and nou- 
 rishment. Surely we need not state how this is an ultimate evil. The mere 
 fact of the solicitous efforts of the slave states themselves to get rid of this portion 
 of their population, proves it. And any who have lived in contact with the 
 unchristianized and naturally worst sort of this race in the free states, need not be 
 told of their being a thieving and predatory nuisance to the whites. Nor need they 
 be reminded that the confessions of the more malignant have shown us, that the blacks 
 feel themselves justified in thus furtively preying upon the whites, by revenge for the 
 wrong they have done them in making them slaves! Is not this, then, a reaction of 
 the evil of slavery? Is it not a righteous retribution? Is it not a plague to 
 compel Pharaoh in us to let the Africans go? 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 29 
 
 evil: but we hold it to be an evil mercifully permitted, 
 in the divine restorative economy, for an ultimate or final 
 good. What that is, we shall see as v^^e proceed. Or if 
 southern slavery be a sin, we are sure it is not one that is 
 unto death. It is a venial transmitted sin. The insti- 
 tution of slavery was entailed upon the southern states by 
 the mother country's cupidity. Hence we regard it there 
 in the light of an hereditary evil, which requires much 
 love and wisdom — great prudence, care, patience and 
 tender solicitude — in its eradication. It must be reofarded 
 as a politically constitutional disease, which can be cured 
 only by time, wise political dietetics, and intelligent skill 
 exciting the body politic' s recuperatii^e energies. All 
 nature is as abhorrent to sudden change as to a vacuum. 
 And the sin of slavery sinks into absolute insignificance 
 in comparison with the egregious sin of those political 
 or morbidly philanthropic quacks, who, by their heroic 
 treatment of this disease — by their sudden alteratives, 
 their decided blood-lettings, their drastic purges, their 
 violent counter-irritants, and their other strong remedies 
 — would either kill the patient, or inflict upon his shat- 
 tered constitution vastly greater and more incurable fac- 
 titious diseases, if, by some mercifully providential for- 
 tuity, he should happen to get well in spite of their phy- 
 sic ! No true man will he forced to do even what is right. 
 And the very worst effect of all objurgatory and even 
 seeming compulsory efforts to destroy the evil of slavery 
 in the South as damning sin, has been the driving of our 
 southern brethren into the justification of it as a divine 
 institution and a positive good. Thus do extremes beget 
 extremes. The truly wise and proper course is to reason 
 w^ith our brethren in true political love — to show them, 
 if we can, their error in kindness ; and by convincing 
 their reason, so act upon their own wills as to get them 
 
30 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 to work themselves in freely and rationally putting off an 
 acknowledged evil. It is moreover our duty to help bear 
 their political burden; and, in this, to share the self- 
 sacrifice and the pecuniary or other loss of their evil's 
 eradication. Nay, it is our privilege to be participants 
 with them in that high national virtue which we verily 
 believe is to be gained by this country in doing magna- 
 nimous justice to Africa. For we are sure that the evil 
 of african slavery has been permitted, by Divine Provi- 
 dence, to exist in this country for that end, as we hope to 
 show in the sequel of this discourse. And it is our duty, 
 not only to help oar southern brethren to see this, if we 
 can, but also to be co-operators with them in their noble 
 work. 
 
 We are aware that our assertions are to some startling. 
 Many think the permission of human slavery by a mer- 
 ciful divine providence is an inscrutable or inexplicable 
 mystery. To some minds, indeed, it borders on blas- 
 phemy to say, that God could have connived at, by per- 
 mitting, an evil so great, or a sin so heinous. But it is 
 well to remember, that " God's ways are not as man's 
 w^ays," and are always "equal" — however otherwise they 
 may seem to short-sighted mortals. Not only is the Lord 
 ever "from seeming evil still educing good;" but all real 
 evil is permitted by him for no other purpose.* There- 
 
 * The Lord's government of the universe is called providence. Or, providence 
 is " arrangement into good." (A. C. 10.452.) " Evils, however, are not provided, 
 but previded, that is, foreseen, and in like manner permissions. But — that it 
 may be known how the case is — previdence relates to evils; but providence is 
 the arrangement of them to good ends. There is, however, no chance ; that is, 
 no evil can happen by chance. But all evils are so governed, that no evil what- 
 ever but what conduces to good is permitted to befal either man or [departed] 
 soul : consequently, nothing is permitted but what must have been foreseen in 
 the way of the discernment of an inevitable event. Therefore it follows, that 
 various evils are so turned as to have such a form [as conduces to good,] and no 
 other; and it cannot but be [that evils occur] in a state so perverse [as that of 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERV. 31 
 
 fore, we are bound to believe, that african slavery in this 
 country has been permitted, in the Lord's wise and mer- 
 ciful providence, for some ultimate good. 
 
 Certainly members of the New Jerusalem should not 
 entertain any doubt on this subject. They know that the 
 Africans are of a celestial genius.- Even now, in the 
 
 mankind, in the abuse of tlieir rational and voluntary faculties, has become.] 
 Thus it is providence alone which governs ; for previdence, or foresight, is thus 
 changed into providence, and thus evils are so previded as to be changed into 
 good : since, if the foreseen [designs] of evil spirits were permitted, they would 
 tend to the destruction of both men and souls. Wherefore the evils intended by 
 evil spirits are turned into such things as are permissible." (Diary, I., p. 334, 
 n. 1088.) 
 
 " The Lord foresees and beholds all and singular things ; and provides for and 
 disposes of all and singular thills : yet in some cases by permission, in some by 
 admission, in some by leave, in some by good pleasure, in some by will." (A. 
 C. 1755.) 
 
 * This, doubtless, will be to many the most startling of our assertions. And 
 certainly, to all appearance, the assertion is most untrue. Africans, as we see 
 them in this country, are a degraded race. The bondage in which they are, is a 
 correspondent of their mental and moral degradation. Their enslaved condition is 
 an outbirth of their interior evils, and, as a reaction on them for their correction or 
 restraint, is a sort of penitentiary ])unishment of their defects of character. The 
 mere fact of their being slaves, also, produces a prejudice against them; and, by 
 the association of ideas, their color, their woolly heads, and their every peculiar 
 and distinctive feature, are connected with all that is low and debased in humanity. 
 Hence to say they are of a celestial genius, shocks the common sense of men 
 around us. But in rightly estimating any form of our common humanity, we 
 must look with philosophic eyes, and "judge righteous judgment." And thus, 
 in estimating the peculiar genius of the african race, we must send our intellectual 
 vision through outside, deceptions appearances, to their interior qualities; or we 
 must apprehend the exterior forms or types of those qualities by that revived 
 science of correspondences which makes effects exponents of their causes. But 
 let us first learn what is meant by celestial, and what is the distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of the celestial man. 
 
 "To know what is true by virtue of what is good, is celestial." " Man is i 
 called celestial, if the Lord's divine good is received in the will part — spiritual, 
 if in the intellectual part." (A. C. 5150.) "The celestial man is one who, from 
 the will principle, is in good, and thence in truth ; and he is distinguished from 
 the spiritual man in this, that the latter, from the intellectual principle, is in truth, 
 and thence in good." (A. C. G295.) "They who are in the Lord's spiritual 
 
32 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 central regions of Africa, — as yet unexplored by Euro- 
 peans, — there is a celestial church, which has the imme- 
 
 kingdom worship him from faith ; hut they who are in his celestial kingdom 
 worship him from love." (A. C. 10.645.) 
 
 From this it appears, that the celestial principle of humanity, is love, will or 
 affection ; and that a man of celestial genius is one whose distinguishing charac- 
 teristic is action from this principle. Now every external of the African is a 
 celestial correspondent. His having wool instead of hair, with his strong pro- 
 pensities for laughing, singing and dancing, are all such. His color seems to be 
 against this hypothesis. But, besides that we have the best reason for knowing 
 that the soul or spirit of the good and wise African is white, and have some reason 
 for believing that the bodies of the higher tribes in the centre of Africa are white 
 also, we iTiust remember that the correspondence of the spiritual things of the soul 
 is with the uses of the natural things of the body, and not with the substance, form 
 or modification of its organs. Thus the correspondence of the understanding is 
 with the sight of the eye, and not with the eye i||elf ; the correspondence of the 
 perception of the mind is with the smell, and not with the nose; the correspond- 
 ence of the obedience of the will is with the hearing, and not with the ear; and 
 so forth. Hence the correspondence of the distinctive genius of the African is 
 with the itse of the color of his skin, and not with the color itself. What, then, 
 is the use of a black skin in the african race? and is this use a spiritual or a 
 celestial correspondent 1 
 
 We know that black does not reflect either light or heat, but absorbs both ; and, 
 in absorbing heat from one side, transmits it to the other. Hence the water in a 
 copper tea-kettle, the bottom of which is scoured bright, will not boil near so soon 
 as when the bottom is blackened with smoke or soot. So heated water in a 
 silver tea-pot will not part with its caloric near so fast, when the surface of 
 the pot is thoroughly cleaned by polishing, as when it is soiled or discolored 
 by being tarnished and uncleaned ; and, as the virtue of the tea is more 
 thoroughly extracted by drawing, the hotter the water is, therefore white 
 china and polished metallic tea-pots are much better for drawing tea than 
 any of the colored sorts. The use of a black skin in the negro is, then, the 
 ready absorption and radiation of heat. Heat in the natural world corresponds to 
 love in the spiritual world. This is the reason that a man becomes warm from 
 passion, and that the natives of hot climates are apt to be choleric and jealous. 
 Hence the countries of the torrid zone, which lie constantly under the sun's ver- 
 tical rays, have a celestial correspondence in the material cosmos, and the men of 
 those countries are relatively of a celestial genius. Nothing can be clearer than 
 that the negro is as much formed by the whole constitution of his body, as well 
 as by the color of his skin, for living, and enjoying life, in the intense intertropical 
 heat of Africa, as the camel is formed for travelling in african deserts. In fact, 
 he is a sort of human salamander. And it is because the negro can endure a 
 degree of heat which kills the white man, that the blacks are better fitted to cnl- 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVER V. 3*3 
 
 diate revelation of truth by angelic spirits.^ Hence Africa 
 in its confines, or in its circumferential regions, must be 
 
 tivate the rice, cotton and sugar plantations of the South, and of the West Indies, 
 than the whites ; and why black can never compete with white labor in moun- 
 tainous and frosty regions. The negro has this power in the peculiar organization 
 of his skin, which not only has an additional layer that secretes a black pigment, 
 but also a more copiously and rapidly perspirable structure. By the blackness 
 and the greater perspirable property of his skin, he radiates heat and evacuates 
 humors more readily and rapidly than the white man. Hence the animal heat 
 and morbid humors which, pent up by his white skin, kill the Caucasian in 
 Africa with fevers, are no impediment to the negro's free and full enjoyment of 
 life there. This is one reason why the whites have never yet been able fully to 
 explore the centre of Africa. The Mighty Lord has encircled that centre with a 
 wall of fire, which is a far more effectual barrier against the inroads of the Euro- 
 peans, than the wall of China ever was against those of the Tartars. And as 
 this is a clear indication of the divine will that Africa should be inhabited, im- 
 proved, reformed, regenerated, governed and elevated solely or mainly by Africans, 
 therefore justice to Africa demands that Europeans, and their descendants in 
 America, who hold her sons in servile bondage or slavish apprenticeship, should 
 send them back to her, having previously fitted them for a happy repose on her 
 bosom ! 
 
 We conclude, that, as the african race, color and all, are correspondents of heat 
 in the torrid zone; and as heat there is a correspondent of love in the celestial 
 kingdom of the spiritual world ; therefore Africans are of a celestial genius. 
 Their degraded forms and characters here, and their hideous forms and horrid 
 barbarities in the circumferential parts of their own country, are the results of the 
 utter perversion of their more noble nature. For, as all evil Ls but perverted 
 good, the more exalted and more perfect the good, the more debased and more 
 deformed must be the evil which results from its perversion. 
 
 When we know that the quarters of the compass in this world signify the four 
 cardinal states of the soul in the other world; and that the east in the spiritual 
 world is where the Lord is in love to him and from him; we may see what is the 
 spiritual position of Africa, relatively to Asia and Europe, from the following 
 revelation : " The angels, when Asia is named, perceive the south ,• when Europe 
 is named, they perceive the north ,• and when Africa is named, they perceive the 
 east.'''' (Ap. Ex. 21.) This shows that, in the perception of the angels, Africans 
 are of the celestial genius. 
 
 * The distinguishing truths of Christianity are " comprehended and received by 
 the Africans" in the other world, "inasmuch as they think more interiorly and 
 spiritually than others. Such being the character of the Africans even in this 
 world, there is therefore at this day a revelation begun among them, which is 
 communicated from the centre round about, but does not extend to the sea coasts. 
 They acknowledge our Lord as the Lord of heaven and earth, and laugh at the 
 
 5 
 
^34 A DISCOURSE OX 
 
 the celestial man in a degenerate state.* This man, in a 
 good degenerate type, must be a willing obedience to 
 some master;! and, in a bad degenerate type, must be the 
 most revolting combatant for dominion over his fellows — 
 
 Monks who visit them, and at Christians who talk of a threefold divinity, and of 
 salvation by mere thought — asserting- that there is no man, who worships at all, 
 that does not live according to his religion; and that, unless a man so lives, he 
 must needs become stupid and wicked, because, in such case, he receives nothing 
 from heaven. They likewise give the name of stupidity to ingenious wickedness, 
 because there is not life but death in it." All " the things contained in the doc- 
 trine of the New Jerusalem," which are now revealed from heaven, for the use of 
 a new and true christian church in christian countries, by writing and the press, 
 "are now revealed, by word of mouth, through angelic spirits, to the inhabitants 
 of that country." (Con. L. J. 75, 7G.) 
 
 " The new church is planted in the centre of Africa amongst those who live a 
 good life, according to the best of their knowledge, and worship one God under 
 a human form." (C. L. 114.) 
 
 * To show tliat, among all heathen nations, the Africans stand preeminent as 
 men of an interior and celestial order, we quote the following authorities: 
 
 In revealing the third state of men after death, " which is the state of instruc- 
 tion of those who come into heaven," our church thus describes the character 
 and genius of the heathen nations: they "who, in the world, have led a good 
 life in conformity with their religion, and have thence derived a species of con- 
 science, and have done what is just and right, not so much on account of the laws 
 of their government, but on account of the laws of religion, which they believed 
 ought to be kept holy, and in no respect to be violated by overt acts — all these, 
 when they are instructed, are easily led to acknowledge the Lord ; because it is 
 impressed on their hearts that God is not an invisible being, but a being visible 
 under a human form. These, in number, exceed all the rest. The hesf of them 
 are from Jifrica'' (H. & H. 511.) 
 
 "Such among the Gentiles as, in the world, have worshiped God under a 
 human form, and have lived a life of charity according to their religion, are con- 
 joined to Christians in heaven ; for they acknowledge and worship the Lord more 
 than the rest. The most intelligent of them are from Jfrica.'" (L. J. 51.) 
 
 "The Gentiles are also distinguished according to their genius, and their dif- 
 ferent capacities of receiving light through the heavens from the Lord ; for there 
 are among them both interior and exterior men, which arises partly from climate, 
 partly from parentage, partly from education, and partly from religion. The 
 Africans are a more interior people than any other of the Gentiles.'''' (U.T. 8.35.) 
 
 f "Among all the nations in heaven, the Africans are most beloved, for they 
 receive the goods and truths of heaven more easily than others. They wish 
 especially to be called obedient, but not faithful. Tiiey say that Christians, be- 
 cause they have the doctrines of faith, may be called faithful ; but not they, unless 
 they receive it; or, as Ihey say, are al)lp to refoivo it." (IT. ^ TI. ^'20, A. C. '■2f>01.) 
 
p 
 
 FREEDOM AND SLAVEKV. :J5 
 
 merging every vestige of true humanity in tlie most b£ir- 
 barous cannibalism. Now, although to us here, with our 
 vision extended to very narrow limits, it may seem a great 
 evil that innocent and well-disposed Africans — men, wo- 
 men and children — should have been brought to this coun- 
 try and sold into bondage to the whites ; yet this is a far less 
 evil than that they should have been butchered and eaten, 
 as captives in war, by their savage conquerors in their own 
 country. It is certainly not a greater evil than that in- 
 flicted upon Joseph by his brethrenr— his own flesh and 
 blood — who sold him, through the Ishmaelites, into egyp- 
 tian bondage. And may we not see that the bondage of 
 Africans in this country is as much in the providence of 
 the Lord for final good to Africa, as the bondage of the 
 Children of Israel in Egypt was for the final good of the 
 church of God in its restoration to Palestine ? The science 
 of Egypt was indi:;;pensably necessary to that restoration. 
 It was equally indispensable in that august restoring of 
 lost humanity by God-witii-us, when he became "Jeho- 
 vah our righteousness." And it ever will be indispensa- 
 ble in the restoration of the celestial church. Wherefore, 
 it has been, and still is, needed in the restoration of the 
 celestial church throughout Africa. Its celesti-al centre 
 needs a scientific reactive plain from Europe, or America, 
 wdiich is Europe transplanted, to extend it to, and form 
 it fully on, the sea coasts. Only in this way can the de- 
 srenerate celestial character of Africa be restored through- 
 out her borders. 
 
 When the celestial church falls, the old or natural will 
 is destroyed, and the understanding is separated from it 
 and scientifically enlightened, so that a new will may be 
 formed in the intellectual principle of the mind. For this 
 purpose Africans of the better degenerate sort, have been 
 sold, by their brethren of the worst degenerate sort, into 
 slavery; and, in the Lord's permissive providence, have 
 
oi\ A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 been brouglit to America as a relative Egypt. Here, by 
 mingling with a more scientific, rational, intellectual and 
 enlightened race, they are in the way of receiving that 
 christian understanding of truth, which is necessary for 
 the development, perfection and defence, in the circum- 
 ference of Africa, of that celestial w^ill of good which is 
 now nascent in its centre. The two-edged sw^ord of african 
 intellect needs tempering and sharpening by european sci- 
 ence to do effectual battle with the evils and falsities that 
 depress and afflict, mankind. While here, the Africans 
 must be the servants or slaves of the Europeans, because, 
 in degenerate man, the darkened will must be subject to, 
 and governed by, the enlightened understanding as a 
 master. But, in the fullness of time, — and the purposes 
 of a Good Providence seem now to be ripening fast, — the 
 enlightened African, restored by colonization to his native 
 land, will carry back those vital influences wdiich are to 
 revivify his country, and cause her, perhaps, to 
 
 "arise, 
 The queen of the world, and the child of the skies" ! 
 
 The black blood of Africa has been sent from her eastern 
 celestial heart to these western countries as spiritual lungs. 
 Here it is brought in contact with the air and ether of 
 Christianity, to give out its effete earthly carbonaceous 
 matters and take in the oxygen of heaven. And when it 
 is thus sufficiently vitalized, it will by and by be seen to 
 pour its encrimsoned flood refluent, for that potent arterial 
 action, by which Humanitij will stand forth disenthralled, 
 and, full developed in celestial purity and perfection, will 
 stretch her arms from Afric's shores, in heavenly bene- 
 diction, over a regenerated w^orld ! 
 
 The part of true wisdom here, then, is to regard slavery 
 in reference to this end. Viewed in this light, its amor- 
 phous and unsightly stones become luminous and beau- 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 37 
 
 teous with the prismatic hues, and fall into the orderly 
 forms, of a heaven-directed kaleidescopal arrangement. 
 Its evil becomes mellowed into good. And if the Ameri- 
 can, knowing that a nation is not horn in a day, shall not 
 spoil his work by impatience — if he shall work in faith 
 while he waits in hope — if he shall look to the sure effec- 
 tuation of high and holy ends by the gradual means of 
 long protracted time — he will perform that work of ge- 
 nuine charity, in such a sidtahle preparation of the african 
 slave for the right use and enjoyment of natural, civil, 
 social and political freedom, as shall doubly bless, both 
 him that gives and him that receives it, when " the set 
 time is full come " for the reception of the boon. 
 
 Yes, we repeat, all nature is abhorrent to sudden" 
 changes ! And slavery, as an hereditary natural evil, 
 long developed in chronic disease, cannot possibly be cor- 
 rected or cured in an instant. In demonstratino^ the evil 
 of slavery, we have shown this already. But we must 
 repeat what we said there, because it is essential to our 
 argument here. African slavery has been gradually in- 
 generated, and has gradually grown up, in long time ; 
 and equally long time is requisite for its safe and thorough 
 eradication from the body politic. Men who have been 
 begotten and born slaves for a long course of years, can 
 only be rebegotten and reborn freemen by the processes 
 of correspondingly protracted reformation and regenera- 
 tion. And hence the instantaneous manumission of the 
 slave, and the sudden abolition of slavery, would be no 
 less unkindness to the slave, than injustice to the commu- 
 nity. That which distinguishes God from man, as well 
 as assimilates man to God, is providence and providence. 
 God foreknows or foresees all things, and incessantly pro- 
 vides that good shall be done and evil be averted or re- 
 strained. Man knows nothins^ or little of the future, 
 
38 A DISCO IJllSE ON 
 
 and can but imperfectly provide for that little in the pre- 
 sent. But so far as man resembles God, he comes into 
 the enjoyment of intelligent foresight, and into the exer- 
 cise of that wise prudence which consists in providing 
 in the present for the future. • And herein the slave differs 
 essentially from the freeman. Trusting to his master's 
 foresight, and fed by his providings, he becomes himself 
 improvident, and, only regarding his own pleasure in the 
 present, he eats up all he has to-day, without laying by 
 any thing for the morrow. Hence, if slaves are suddenly 
 manumitted, and thrown out of the sphere and -patronage 
 of intelligent and provident freemen, they ere long dete- 
 reorate in character, become destitute and miserable in 
 condition, and decrease in numbers. So that it is as un- 
 kind and unmerciful to set a slave free at once, without 
 preparing him gradually for the use and enjoyment of 
 liberty, as it is to let loose a bird that has been hatched 
 and reared in a cage, and constantly fed, and every way 
 cared for, by the assiduous attentions of its human pos- 
 sessor — in which case, it is well known that the creature 
 perishes from its incapacity to take care of itself. 
 
 Consequently, the true duty of America in regard to 
 slavery, and her genuine charity to the African in the 
 emancipation of him from it, must consist in all those 
 constitutional provisions for the abolishment of the evil, 
 which not only look to the emancipation of the slave in 
 some future time, but shall also make it penally obligatory 
 on his master* to qualify him, in the mean tinie, by suit- 
 
 * We are aware how repugnant this must be to the principles and feelings of 
 those who hold to the right of property in human beings, and how much it is 
 ao-ainst what they now regard as their interests. But our agument is not ad- 
 dressed to them. We too well know the fruitlessness of reasoning for truth and 
 justice in those matters wherein the selfish and worldly interests of mankind are 
 at stake. Our argument is addressed to those who, like Washington, Jefferson, 
 Madison and Randolph, regard slavery as a civil and political evil which is to be 
 
FREEDOM AAD SLAVER'i . 39 
 
 able education and the development of useful capacities, 
 for the right and profitable use of freedom when it shall 
 become his portion. Any thing short of this, would be 
 unkindness to the slave, and injustice to the community. 
 
 gradually worked out of the body politic by wise, prudent and prospective con- 
 stitutional provisions. And the principle here involved is, that african bondage 
 in this country is slavish apprenticeship. It is presumed that Africans have been 
 suffered to come here, by Divine Providence, for their reformation and their coun- 
 try's regeneration. The slave state, which alone has the power to determine 
 ■whether slavery shall or shall not be an institution of its polity, takes to itself, 
 in its collective capacity, an entire wardship of the slaves. It touches not the 
 right of individual property in any that are slaves now ; but it decrees that every 
 child, begotten by slave parents after a certain period, shall be born free; and it 
 apprentices the child so born, when nurtured and reared by its parents to a suit- 
 able age, and properly educated at free schools to be established and maintained 
 by the state for the purpose, to some master or mistress, either the owner of the 
 parents, or some other person, as the case may seem to require and as may be 
 agreeable to the owner — to learn some useful handicraft or occupation — to serve 
 till thirty years of age, and then to receive a suit of clothes and enough money to 
 take him or her to Africa — the state providing the means of, and securing, the 
 transportation. It presumes that the value of the services of the apprentice to 
 the master or mistress, during so long an apprenticeship, is a full equivalent for 
 all he or she receives either before or at the day of freedom. And the only sa- 
 crifice the slaveholder makes is of the institution of slavery — which he gives up 
 for the good of the country — and of the increased value of the enfranchised work- 
 man's services during the remainder of his life. It should be observed, however, 
 that he as an individual has no just right to a value which has accrued from the 
 state's emancipating measures; and, as an offset, he is relieved from the burden 
 of maintaining the superannuated slave. Of course, there is no weight whatever 
 in these observations, if african slavery in this country is a civil and political 
 blessinor to both the blacks and the whites. But, if we mistake not the signs of 
 the times, the days of slavery, in this and in all countries, are numbered- If there 
 was a final general judgment in the spiritual world in the year 1757, as we be- 
 lieve — if, in consequence of this, a new heavenly arrangement of Christians in 
 that world has taken place — if from this new heaven a new and true christian 
 church is now descending to earth — and if sevenfold light and heat, from the Sun 
 of Heaven newly rising in the minds of all men, is pouring down upon all the 
 marshy grrounds, foggy valleys and dark places of human degeneracy — then an 
 explosive force, a mental, moral and spiritual nitric oxide compound, is generating, 
 which will burst and dissipate into thin air the bonds of slavery wherever they 
 exist ! And wo be to the hand that attempts to stay its rendings ! Yes, a decree, 
 infinitely more irrevocable than that of the Medes and Persians, has gone forth, 
 that, in due time, slavery in our southern states shall cease: and as well might 
 a man try to prevent the explosion of a locomotive steam boiler by putting his 
 
40 A DISCOURSE OX 
 
 Well, tlieii, may it be said to our countrymen — " If ye 
 know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." They 
 will be happy, not merely in getting rid of an evil which 
 is endangering their political safety and social prosperity, 
 
 arms round it, as the South atttempt to array herself against the fulfilment of this 
 divine decree ! All her measures for perpetuating- slavery against the spirit of 
 the present age, are gradually laj'ing a train which will thoroughly undermine 
 her constitution, and ultimately explode to her inevitable destruction. And it is 
 the part of true wisdom in her to provide this catastrophe, and to forfend it by 
 the instant and constant provision of all requisite present and prospective means. 
 
 In this view of the subject, we are satisfied that the true way is to regard slavery 
 as a spiritual evil — as a counteraction of the laws of the Divine Governor of the 
 Universe, who will have all men to come to the knowledge of the truth, and de- 
 crees that tfie truth every where shall make them free! Therefore the abolition of 
 slavery is not the work of the state or general government. It is a national work. 
 It is the work of the people, the whole people. The people of America, as one 
 man, are just as much bound to give money — each and every one of them a por- 
 tion — to indemnify the slaveholder for the constitutional property which he gives 
 up for the good of the nation, as they are to erect a monument to Washington. 
 And they are bound to do it by voluntary contribution — not by government tax. 
 The grand principle is, to develope a national virtue by a national act : and nei- 
 ther the South, nor any other part of the nation, has a right, in divine justice, to 
 monopolize the virtue by assuming the action wholly to itself. If the South per- 
 mits and decrees it, it is the duty of the american church to educate and prepare 
 the children of the slaves for freedom, and, if necessary, to purchase them for the 
 purpose. In our humble opinion, this is a more incumbent and a more noble 
 charity than civilizing and christianizing the Indians, or sending missionaries to 
 the Heathen of foreign lands. And it is just as feasible for all the christian sects 
 to unite in this work, as in printing and publishing the Sacred Scriptures without 
 note or comment. When the offspring of the slaves are prepared for freedom, it 
 will be the work of the american people, in their collective capacity, to send them 
 to Africa. 
 
 No plan of preparing the slaves for freedom will be effectual, which is not 
 founded upon marriage. We must improve the african race as the races of ani- 
 mals are improved. Marriage among the blacks should be most strictly regulated 
 by wise rules. No adult apprentice that is morally vicious or physically de- 
 formed or diseased, should be allowed to marry at all. Marriage should be 
 allowed to the apprentices only as a reward of exemplary virtue, piety and true 
 religion; they should not be allowed to contract it before the age of twenty-five 
 in the male and twenty in the female ; and when married they should be set up 
 in business, and taught to discharge with propriety the duties of the family rela- 
 tion in near proximity to the families of their masters, and under their intelligent 
 and paternal supervision. Thus will young families be prepared for Africa. And 
 by crossing the various tribes, as well as by"pairing the more noble and generous 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 41 
 
 but, what is far more desirable, they will be happy in 
 that political, civil and moral elevation of character which 
 results from a high and noble nature brought into full 
 form and vigor by the long-continued and consistent ex- 
 sorts, vast improvements of the race in general might be effected. Of course, 
 there should be nothing arbitrary or capricious in these allotments : but a free and 
 rational restraining of passions, and guiding of inclinations, by sensible advice, 
 moral suasion, and kindly authority, as in the best regulated modes of society 
 among the whites. The affinities and drawings of interior conjugial affections 
 must never be outraged by the forced determinations of factitious law or abitrary 
 authority. Perhaps those who ought not to intermarry, should never be thrown 
 together, either in the school room, the place of labor or the plain of recreation. 
 This would prevent early attachments among such as ought not to be united in 
 wedlock. It might be difficult to draw the line marking properly the degree of 
 moral or physical defect prohibitory of marriage. But there would be no field for 
 wisdom to exercise herself in, if there were no difficulties ; and this difficulty, true 
 wisdom could easily overcome. In the case of ideots, the principle and the case are 
 manifest. And it only seems hard, that those who are physically deformed or 
 diseased — so as to be impotent, or to be able to have only a physically degenerate 
 progeny — should be debarred from the sweets of conjugial and domestic life, 
 when they are possessed of the higher order of mental powers and virtues. But 
 this is a case for that species of noble self-denial, which has led superior minds 
 of the white race, tainted, for instance, with hereditary insanity, to doom them- 
 selves to celibacy, or to immolate themselves on the altar of their country's bat- 
 tle-field, that they might die childless, and so stop the propagation of a defective 
 form of humanity. It is clear, that the african race, like any other, cannot be 
 radically, thoroughly and highly improved, without wise and intelligent regard 
 to the marriage principle as here suggested. And it must never be forgotten, that 
 any decided elevation of the african character by these means, must only be looked 
 for in long courses of time, and by the most gradual steps of ascent. 
 
 Nor will any plan for abolishing african slavery in the southern states be prac- 
 ticable, which does not contemplate radical changes in the manners, customs and 
 entire social economy of the whites. This, indeed, is the great and inherent dif- 
 ficulty of the subject. For it is almost impossible to make communities give up 
 principles of pride, which underlay their honor, and to submit to entire changes 
 of their social organization, however gradual and prospective they may be. Nay, 
 they at once resist the inceptive measure in strongest opposition to its final result. 
 Therefore all theories for the abolition of slavery are chimerical which do not rest 
 on organic changes of the slave communities, brought about by their own free 
 and rational action in giving up former principles and adopting new ones, that alone 
 can sustain an unmixed and politically and socially equal population in the vari- 
 ous relations of mutual and reciprocal service. The hands and the head of the 
 South must be washed, before she can be made every whit clean by tlie washing 
 
42 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 ercise of great virtues. God grant that our country may, 
 in this respect, enjoy the exceedingly precious blessing 
 of his divine favor! 
 
 of her feet. There must be as great a change in the character of the whites as of 
 the blacks in preparing the state for so radical a metamorphosis. White children 
 must be reared and educated on different principles. The notion that a white man 
 is degraded by doing a negro's work, must be exploded : for in a homogeneous 
 and truly free community there is no negro's work to be done. The idea that it 
 is more honorable or respectable to receive service from others than to render it to 
 them, must be dissipated at once. This is the corner-stone of feudalism and of 
 imperious sway. It is both anti-republican and anti-christian. The christian 
 maxim is a political truth — " it is better to give than to receive " service. Higher 
 and lower service, in wider and narrower spheres of usefulness, is the only hono- 
 rable distinction in a true republic as in the true church : and the instruments of 
 low and common labor must be relatively the community's own foot, and not an 
 African's neck under it. Then will even low and common labor be dignified 
 with all the honor of the whole body. The community will regard its common 
 laborer with some thing of the feeling of a father who kisses with fond affection 
 the tiny foot of his prattling infant, or of a man who admires the well formed 
 foot of the woman that he loves. In the w^ords of an apostle, the community can 
 then practically say — " our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness ; for 
 our comely parts have no need : but God hath tempered the body together, hav- 
 ing given more abundant honor to that part which lacked : that there should be no 
 schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for an- 
 other: and whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one 
 member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." (1 Cor., xii., 23-26.) 
 When labor is thus dignified, and the laborer is thus honored, in the South, then 
 there will be no difficulty in abolishing slavery there. Free white men will freely 
 go thither to do the work that is now done by slaves. Small property holders 
 will more divide the soil. Other sources of wealth will be developed. New 
 kinds of business will be set on foot, requiring a greater variety of labor and of 
 talent. The present vast and almost exclusive production of cotton, rice and 
 sugar will undergo great modifications — lessening in amount, indeed, and so 
 ceasing to enrich the few, but conspiring with a greater variety of productions to 
 enrich the many, and, by multiplying a greater number of kinds of wealth and 
 aggregating a greater total from very many small amounts of wealth, to increase 
 vastly in quality and degree the prosperity of the commonwealth. And as all this 
 is to take place gradually, in long courses of time, afforded by the gradual prepa- 
 ration of the black population for an advantageous removal to Africa, there may 
 be such a slow and quiet infiltration of white laborers into the renewed and bet- 
 tered forms of society, ^ja/v' passu with the black laborers' leaving them, as will 
 not only save the institutions of the states from any kind of convulsive or injurious 
 change, but give to them the solidity, transparency and polish of a sort of social 
 petrifaction. 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. . 43 
 
 But it is far more incumbent on us to regard spiritual 
 freedom, as a good, in contrast with spiritual slavery, as 
 an evil. Our text teaches us, that spiritual slavery is the 
 bondage of sin; and spiritual freedom is the service of 
 the Lord. The service of the Lord is perfect freedom. 
 For the Lord is love and wisdom itself; and what a man 
 does from love by wisdom is most spontaneous and free. 
 Wisdom is good mform, that is, truth made good by vir- 
 tuous activity. Love is good in essence, that is, essential 
 good formed and qualified by the truth which corresponds 
 to it. The service of wisdom is the obedience of its pre- 
 cepts — is the doing of truth for truth's sake. This service 
 is always the more or less constrained subjection of the 
 natural to the spiritual man: because truth "reproves 
 the world of sin" — condemns the natural man's evils, and 
 requires the spiritual man to renounce them. And this 
 service is the result of divine reformation. The service 
 of love is the spontaneous doing of good for goodness' 
 sake; and is the result of divine regeneration. 
 
 Now the service of wisdom or truth, is> formal, and the 
 service of love or good, is essential, freedom. For, as man 
 obeys the precepts of wisdom, he comes into the experi- 
 mental or vital understanding of truth, in consequence of 
 putting away from his life all the evil of false principles; 
 and thus is delivered from the bondag^e of sin, so as to 
 become the Lord's freeman, by spiritually constrained 
 action. For all obedience of truth, which subjects man's 
 selfish and worldly loves to the behests of divine and spi- 
 ritual love, is at first undelightful, because a cross to the 
 natural man: yet still it is freedom; because, although a 
 man is a slave when forced by others, he is most truly or 
 formally free when he forces himself. This, therefore, is 
 what we call formal freedom; because trutli is the form 
 
44 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 of all things that are in order, while good is the essence of 
 all things that are in use. 
 
 But the service of love is man's spontaneous action 
 from the ruling end of doing good to others for their own 
 sakes. So far as a man acts consistently from this end, 
 he comes himself into the enjoyment and living percep- 
 tion of the good which he seeks to do to others. In the 
 delight of making others happy, he is most happy him- 
 self. Hence, in the love of good for its own sake is 
 essential delight; and therefore essential freedom; for 
 whatever is done with delight, or whatever produces de- 
 light in the doing it, is most freely done — the essence of 
 freedom being the happiness of delightful emotions with 
 their calm and peaceful content. 
 
 On the other hand, "in the love of evil is [essential] 
 servitude;" and the essence of slavery is the misery of 
 undeliffhtful emotions with their restless discontent. For 
 the love of evil, that is, the love of self and the world as 
 final ends of action, constantly tends, in its activity, to 
 injure others, instead of doing them good. Thus it runs 
 counter to all the laws of the divine economy. Conse- 
 quently, it is perpetually subject to the counteraction of 
 those laws. In short, the universal law of the divine 
 economy is, that evil shall react upon itself for its own 
 correction. So that, whenever evil goes forth in any of 
 its corresponding activities, it comes, more or less imme- 
 diately, into bonds : while, nevertheless, the yearnings of 
 its infernal desires are int^reased in the ratio of the re- 
 straining weights which are made to impend upon them 
 — as smothered fires burn with a more intense heat. All 
 a man who is actuated by evil love does, is attended with 
 misery, in order that his action from that love may be 
 restrained. Hence, in action from that love, there is the 
 veriest servitude or slavery. For, as that which a man 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 45 
 
 does with delight is free ; so that which a man does with 
 misery is constrained. There is, indeed, an infernal de- 
 light at first in the commission of evil : but it is invariably 
 followed by corresponding misery in the reactions upon 
 it. The activities of an evil love gnaw as a deathless 
 worm, and burn as a quenchless fire. Constantly urged 
 to work, and yet flogged as with scorpions when he has 
 worked, the man of evil passions is subjected to the most 
 galling task, and the most relentless taskmaster. The 
 activities of evil love produce, in the substance of the 
 human soul, or in man's spiritual body, a sort of cancer- 
 ous diathesis, which breaks out in " putrefying sores." 
 (Isa., i., 6.) The delights of this evil love are as the 
 itching of these cancerous sores, and as the pleasure felt 
 in their friction. But the pain which follows such fric- 
 tion, and the increased cancerous action consequent on 
 the greater afiiux of blood and nervous fluid to the part, 
 emblem too truly the bondage and burden of sin. And 
 so it is that " in the love of evil there is servitude." 
 
 And they who are in such servitude can never come 
 into good, so as to feel delight in doing it purely for its 
 own sake : thus cannot enter into heaven wdiich consists 
 in that delight, and which is only open to those who are 
 in divine truth by obedience to its precepts. And so it 
 is that " the servant of sin abideth not in the house for 
 ever." 
 
 But "the son abideth for ever." If, then, ''the son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.'" The son 
 is the divine truth. The house, in which this abides for 
 ever, is the good which it incessantly effects. The thought 
 of the mind dwells constantly on and in what the man 
 loves to do. The thought, flowing from the will and 
 aff"ection of the love, brings them out into corresponding 
 form and activity in the speech and action. And in the 
 
46 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 speech and action which correspond to it, the end or pnr- 
 pose of the love finds a fundament, continent and resting 
 place, so as to give to the love therein " a local habitation 
 and a name." It was thus that the divine love, in the 
 Lord's glorification of his humanity, found a thorough 
 outbirth and permanent abode. And it is ever thus that 
 the divine truth from him, flowing by reformation and 
 regeneration into the souls of men, causes them to abide 
 in the good that corresponds to it. And so it is that 
 "tlie son abideth in the house for ever." 
 
 In explaining the portion of the Holy Word before us, 
 our church teaches the following clear and satisfactory 
 doctrine : 
 
 " He who acts in any case from the affection which is of the love of good, acts 
 from a free principle ; but he who acts from the affection which is of the love of 
 evil, appears to act from a free principle, but in reality does not, because he acts 
 from the lusts which flow in from hell. He alone is free who is in the affection 
 of good; because he is led of the Lord. That freedom consists in being led of 
 the Lord, and servitude in being led of lusts wiiich are from hell," must be 
 manifest to all spiritual discernment; "for the Lord implants affections in favor 
 of what is good, and aversion to what is evil. Hence to do good is freedom, and 
 to do evil is altogether servile. He who believes that christian liberty has a 
 further extent, is very much deceived." (A. C. 9096.) 
 
 " When man's internal principle [or the spiritual man] conquers, as is the case 
 when it has reduced the external [principle or the natural man] to agreement or 
 compliance [with itself,] then man is endowed by the Lord with essential liberty 
 and essential rationality; for then man is rescued by the Lord from infernal 
 liberty, which in itself is [the veriest] servitude, and is introduced into celestial 
 liberty, which in itself is essential freedom, and has consociation granted him 
 with the angels." (Ap, Ex. 409-) 
 
 Thus the Lord teaches us by this text "that they are 
 servants [or slaves] who are in sins ; and that he makes 
 those free who, by the Word, receive truth from him." 
 Consequently, when the Jews, in reply to his saying, 
 "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
 free," " answered him. We are the seed of Abraham, and 
 were never in bondage to any one ; how sayest thou. Ye 
 shall be made free?" &c. &c. — 
 
FREEDOIM AND SLAVERY. 47 
 
 " By these words is understood, that freedom consists in being led of the 
 
 Lord, and that servitude consists in being led of hell. By truth which makcsfree, 
 is meant the divine truth which is from the Lord ; for he who receives that truth 
 in doctrine and in life is free [indeed] ; because he becomes spiritual, and is led 
 of the Lord. Wherefore, also, it is said, that the son ahideth in the house for ever, 
 and if the son mahes you free, you shall he free indeed j where by the son is meant 
 the Lord, and likewise truth; and to abide in the house, denotes [to dwell] in 
 heaven. That to be led of hell is servitude, is taught by these words, every one 
 who doeth sin is the servant of sin ; where sin denotes hell, because sin is from 
 hell." (Ap. Ex. 409.) 
 
 "All that is called freedom which is of the will — thus which is of the love: 
 and hence it is that freedom manifests itself by the delight of willing and of 
 thinking; and hence of doing and of speaking; for all delight is of love, and all 
 love is of the will, and the will is the esse of the life of man." (A. C. 9585.) 
 
 This is the reason that, in all contests for political liberty 
 with arbitrary powers, the first and chief thing fonght 
 for, is liberty of speech and freedom of action; and this 
 is the reason why despots, whenever they are enslaving 
 a people, silence the press by their censorship and impair 
 freedom of speech and action by their fines and penalties. 
 
 " To do evil from the delight of love, appears to be freedom; but it is servi- 
 tude, because it is from hell. To do good from the delight of love, both appears 
 to be and really is freedom, because it is from the Lord. Servitude, therefore, 
 consists in being led of hell, and freedom in being led of the Lord." (A. C. 8586.) 
 
 Such is the Lord's doctrine in onr text. And how 
 clearly does it teach lis that, '^ if the son makes ns free, 
 we sJiall he free indeed" ! 
 
 To what has been advanced it may be added, that to 
 do evil from the delight of evil, appears to be freedom 
 only to the mere natural man; and to do good from the 
 delight of love, appears to be freedom only to the spiritual 
 man. To the natural man, — especially the corporeal and 
 sensual man, — the doing good from the delight of love, 
 ' seems preposterous; and any obligation he may feel under 
 to do it, seems to him a galling yoke and a fearful bondage. 
 But if, in faith, he obeys the truth of God unto the entire 
 
48 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 renunciation of all action from every evil love, the Lord, 
 by charity, or spiritual love, implants in him a spiritual 
 affection for truth and goodness, and so lightens the bur- 
 den which spiritual truth imposes on his natural man. 
 And then he realizes the blessedness of the Lord's divine 
 injunction and assurance — " Come unto me, all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
 my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am rneek and 
 lowly in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matt., 
 xi., 28-30.) 
 
 Our subject is full-fraught with lessons of practical 
 wisdom in respect to what it becomes us, as a nation, to 
 know and to do, for the preservation of our own country's 
 liberties, and for the universal political good of all other 
 nations. It unfolds to us the nature of slavery in its es- 
 sential or internal form, as an evil far more to be dreaded, 
 and far more to be eschewed, than that external form of 
 it which is now so much exciting the imaginary fears, 
 and the spurious philanthropies, of outside patriots. In 
 short, it unfolds to us the nature of slavery as the root 
 and branch of all arbitrary power. And, in its wise mo- 
 nitions, it points to duty the only pathway to our coun- 
 try's safety, our domestic peace and our individual hap- 
 piness. Let us, then, in a commemoration of the birth- 
 day of that great and good man, whom our Heavenly 
 Father mercifully raised up and sustained as a focal point 
 of his own divine energies in working out for our coun- 
 try her happy exemption from arbitrary dominion and 
 oppressive political sway, make a practical improvement 
 of the principles set forth in this discourse. 
 
 Let us first contemplate the spectacle which our poli- 
 tical birth-right presents. Let us consider its probable 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 49 
 
 influence on the nations of the old world. Let us ponder 
 well the obligations which it imposes on us as Americans. 
 And let us, at some length and in a varied form of pre- 
 sentation, consider again, and more summarily, the true 
 nature of freedom and slavery — to the end that we may 
 see more clearly, and feel more strongly, our duty as 
 Americans of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 It is not three quarters of a century since political free- 
 dom had her birth-day in the broad and lovely expanse 
 of this new-found world. A nation, conceived of God by 
 a general judgment in the world of spirits, gestated in 
 "times that tried men's souls," was brought forth in the 
 feeblest infancy of political existence. The United States 
 of America were declared a free and independent nation. 
 The prestige of greatness and of glory shone as a halo 
 around the head of the new-born babe. The best of blood 
 was in its veins. It owned the pedigree of virtuous and 
 mighty sires. A scion of a great and glorious stock, trans- 
 planted to a more genial soil, was to grow with greater 
 growth, flourish with new vigor, and fructify in a vastly 
 greater development of all that pertains to and secures the 
 best interests of mankind. 
 
 The nations of Europe, stereotyped in the flxed forms 
 of immemorial usage, could not be reformed and regene- 
 rated with a political new-birth without being broken up, 
 melted over, and cast into a new mould. There was no 
 space large enough, in any general division of that old 
 contiftient, to hold the mould of the NEW MAN — that 
 better, greater, grander form of political humanity, which 
 God, in his mercy, designed and deigned to bring forth, 
 and rear up, as the Atlas, upon whose shoulders was to 
 be upborne all national existence, virtue and prosperity. 
 A new continent, v/liich the Lord had hid in the treasure- 
 7 
 
50 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 house of this western hemisphere, was, in the fullness of 
 his times, discovered and brought forth. Here, where 
 the towering Andes, Cordilleras and Rocky Mountains 
 stretch, for nearly half the arc of a great circle, the huge 
 back-bone of a mighty frams — here, where giant rivers 
 hurl herculean floods to bottomless oceans on every side 
 — where lakes are seas like mighty wild beasts caged in 
 rocky barriers — where boundless prairies, like mantles 
 studded with Flora's many-colored gems, are spread, as 
 royal robes, over the shoulders of Nature, sitting queen 
 and nursing mother of a countless progeny of nations — 
 where vegetation springs up in giant growths — where 
 trees grow higher and thicker, skies stretch wider, and 
 every thing puts on the dimensions of greater magnitude, 
 than any where else in the world — here, and here alone, 
 could the mould of a newer, truer and better humanity 
 be formed for the recasting into better political shapes 
 all the old nations of the world. In short, here alone 
 could a mighty republic of confederated nations present 
 the adequate forms, magnitudes, symmetries and perfec- 
 tions of a national maximus liomo ! 
 
 And hither have the old world's migrating myriads 
 come, like different kinds of food into a healthy political 
 stomach, to be digested into the new and better conditions 
 of improved bodies politic. And as these foreigners have 
 died, and their spirits have risen into the spiritual world, 
 their reflex influence from the world of spirits, has put 
 the leaven into the old world, so that the whole lump of 
 european nations is undergoing a thorough fermentation, 
 and the batch is risino^ into the new forms of regenerated 
 political existence. The spirit of truth, flowing down, 
 as hot water, through new arrangements of the spirits of 
 men in the spiritual world, is cracking the painted and 
 gilded porcelain forms of ancient political organization, 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 51 
 
 or is slacking the calcined crystallizations of long fixed 
 political elements, every where in the old world — so as, 
 by various disintegration, to tit them for new political 
 combinations in this land of expanding intelligence and 
 rational freedom. Here decrepit political humanity was 
 to find a fulfilment of prophecy; and, "waiting upon 
 the Lord," was to "renew her strength," to "mount up 
 with wings as eagles,''^ ^ to "run and not be weary," and to 
 " walk and not faint." 
 
 And the infant form of this now adult mighty model 
 for all other nations, was ushered into life, with excruci- 
 ating parturient pains, only about seventy-three years ago. 
 Not more than a century and a quarter has elapsed since 
 the buds first swelled on our tree of liberty. The one hun- 
 dred and eighteenth anniversary of the birth of him who 
 was preeminently the individual type of the new and true 
 humanity in its civil and political form, has just passed, 
 and to-day leads our minds to the religious contemplation 
 of the subject of that civil freedom which he was so fa- 
 vored an agent of the Lord our God in effecting for our 
 now happy country. We say this is a subject meet for 
 religious contemplation ; because this area of civil freedom 
 in America, was a needful plain for a fuller development 
 of that spiritual freedom which consists in the deliverance 
 of the spirits of all mankind from the thraldom of sin. 
 And oh how much does it behoove us ever to bear in 
 wisely and intelligently practical commemoration an 
 event so pregnant with blessings to ourselves and to all 
 men ! Oh with what fervid tones of all our best affections 
 should we offer up our thanks to our Father in the Hea- 
 vens for the great boon of such a man — not merely to our 
 
 * It is believed that tlie standards, flags, or armorial bearings of nations corre- 
 spond in some way to their distinctive internal characters, and mark their peculiar 
 places, so to speak, in the grand man of this lower world. 
 
')'Z A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 country, but to the world ! And let us by no means for- 
 get the instructions of the divine truth, which has so clearly 
 taught us, in our text, the true nature of that freedom 
 — that deliverance from arbitrary power — which, in its 
 political phasis, he was the divinely appointed leading 
 means of working out for us and our remotest posterity ! 
 Let us not turn our backs on the angel of light which has 
 herein so fully shown us the obligations we are under to 
 preserve this freedom in its purity for the welfare of our 
 own and of all other nations ! 
 
 Will you, then, allow me still further to trespass on 
 your patience, already too much taxed, while I recapitu- 
 late, in a varied form of presentation, what has been taught 
 us in respect to the nature of freedom ? It becomes us — 
 it is our duty — in practical reflection upon what has been 
 advanced, to consider this, so that our souls may more 
 fully imbibe the spirit and the life of that true freedom, 
 and impart to our country and to mankind the saving 
 efficacy of its healthful influences : while we, at the same 
 time, scrutinize more particularly the true nature of that 
 internal slavery which we have seen is an evil so much 
 to be dreaded and avoided ; so that we may practically, 
 not only theoretically, discern its essence and its source, 
 and, by seeing in ourselves, individually, the root of all 
 arbitrary power, that root of bitterness, we may effectually 
 pluck it up from our own bosoms, and cast it from us ; 
 and thus do all we can to save our country and all men 
 from its fatal sproutings. 
 
 What, then, do we learn, or have we learned, from the 
 teachings of God's Word, and the doctrines of his church, 
 as to the true idea of freedom and slavery ? 
 
 If there is any one word which expresses the true idea 
 of freedom, it is equilihriitm. The common notion is, 
 
FREEDOIM AND SLAVERY. 53 
 
 that a man is free when he has the power and liberty to 
 do what he likes. This, indeed, as our lesson has taught 
 us, is natural freedom. For action is free when it is ac- 
 cording to the ruling love. What a man loves to do, that 
 he does with delight; and when one is allowed to do 
 w^hat is delightful to him without any let or hindrance, 
 his life seems to him unconstrained, and therefore free. 
 Hence all freedom must have a quality according to the 
 character of the love from which it springs. And thus 
 natural freedom, being the unrestrained activity of natural 
 love, takes its quality, its form and its hue from natural 
 love. But natural love is the love of self, or the love of 
 dominion over others; with the love of wealth as the 
 means of obtaining it. And the unrestrained activity of 
 self-love among men would be the liberty to bring all men 
 into subjection to one man, and the power and right to 
 appropriate and possess all their property. And this, it 
 is easy to see, would be universal slavery. For, when 
 one man had subjected all other men to him, they would 
 be all his slaves ; and he would be the greatest slave of 
 them all, because he would be a slave to himself: for no 
 man is so much a slave as he who cannot act contrary to 
 his own natural passions. 
 
 To love oneself above all things, and to act invariably 
 with a view to one's own gratification, is essential sin. 
 For sin is contrariety to divine order ; and the order in 
 which God creates man is to love others as well as or 
 better than himself, and to find his happiness in all those 
 acts of good use to other men by which he makes them 
 happy. Hence the essence of sin is to act against the love 
 of others and the love of promoting the common good. 
 Thus self-love, which is active in the love of dominion 
 and seeks its own gratification in subjecting all other men 
 to itself, is essential sin. And the servant of this sin is 
 
54 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 the essential slave. We have thus arrived at a point from 
 which we see the nature of slavery and discern its essence 
 and its source. 
 
 Hence comes the disposition to have and to exercise all 
 arbitrary power. This, in the individual man, makes him 
 self-willed or determined to have his own way, dictatorial 
 and overbearing in his conduct to others, and most cruel 
 in his treatment of them, if they in any way thwart him 
 in the attainment of his ends, or do not prove subsequient 
 and subservient to him in the gratification of his desires. 
 It leads the politician to fawn and flatter the people until, 
 wafted by the breath of popular favor to the pinnacles of 
 chief power, he can exercise dominion over them and 
 enact the tyrant. It leads the people themselves to the 
 worst of all tyrannies, when they substitute their blind 
 will for the law which is divine justice. "He," says the 
 doctrine of our church, " w^ho regards himself as above 
 the law, places royalty in himself, and either believes 
 himself to be the law, or the law, which is justice, to be 
 derived from himself. Hence he arrogates to himself 
 that which is divine — to which, nevertheless, he ought to 
 be in subjection." And "the king who lives according 
 to the law, and therein sets an example to his subjects, is 
 truly a king." But "a king who has absolute power, 
 and believes that his subjects are such slaves that he has 
 a right to their possessions and lives, and exercises such 
 a right, is not a king but a tyrant." (H. D.) 
 
 Such is the doctrine of our church in regard to tyran- 
 ny — expressed indeed in respect to kingly government ; 
 but involving the principle of tyranny in respect to all 
 governments, even that of a republic, or democracy, in 
 w^iich the people, as a vast collective man, are regarded as 
 the sovereign, exercising a sort of self government. And 
 hence we see that the essence of tyranny consists in putting 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 55 
 
 selfish will above just laws, and in making the will of 
 man the source of government instead of the justice of 
 God. So that, when the mere wdll of the people, in the 
 form and organization of any collective man, is put above 
 the law, or is regarded as the law% or is deemed the source 
 from whence the law is derived, there is the greatest and 
 the most perfect tyranny, because it is the tyranny of a 
 vast collective man instead of that of an individual man. 
 Hence the outbursts of popular will, not only in the vari- 
 ous forms of mobile violence, but also in the bearino- down 
 of capricious public opinion, are often the most detestable 
 exercises of arbitrary power, and present the very worst 
 form of that despotism w^iich springs from the sway of 
 unbridled self-love. 
 
 The same principle leads nations to all those acts of 
 aggression by which one is subjected to the power of an- 
 other, and those who exercise power in each, can have 
 the means of exerting arbitrary sway over those who are 
 dependent on them. We all know, or have been informed, 
 how the love of dominion from the love of self impelled 
 the mother country to oppress her cis-atlantic colonies — 
 to aggrandize herself at their expense — to tax them against 
 their will and without fair representation in a legislature 
 of their own — and most oppressively to burden them by 
 the unjust exactions of arbitrary and mercenary govern- 
 ors. And we well know how the reactions of a free spirit 
 upon these oppressions of the mother country, roused our 
 forefathers to the war of our revolution, nerved them to 
 maintain it, for eight long years, by the most inadequate 
 means, against the best appointed forces, and enabled 
 them to wade through fire and blood to that consumma- 
 tion of a free, prosperous, great and happy political exist- 
 ence which it is now our blest privilege to enjoy ! 
 
 We see, then, what true freedom is, by discerning most 
 
56 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 clearly what it is not. The liberty of the natural man to 
 do as he pleases is not true freedom. It is the quintes- 
 sence of slavery. It is the liberty of the selfish man to 
 make all others subservient to himself. The upshot of 
 which is, that all become slaves to him, and he becomes 
 slave to himself, because he has no power, in the free vo- 
 lition, or in the equilibrations of a rational mind, to con- 
 trol the burstings forth of his own ungovernable passions 
 — which, however controlled by external restraints, such 
 as the fears of the loss of life, of honor, of wealth, or of 
 power, are but the pent fires of a furious volcano, that 
 ever and anon break forth in burning and desolating 
 lavas! "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of 
 sin." 
 
 On the other hand, the best and truest teacher assures 
 us — " If the son shall make you free, ye shall be free in- 
 deed." Our church has taught us, in what is gone before, 
 that the son is that divine truth which is the form, the 
 effigy, the express image of all that is good. It is the 
 brightness of the glory of love — that love which delights 
 in doing good to others simply with a view to their hap- 
 piness, and without selfish regard to any recompense. 
 It is the form of that order which ensues when the wild 
 impulses of the natural or selfish man without, are brought 
 into subjection to the clear rational dictates of the spirit- 
 ual man within. It is that order which ensues when a 
 man, from the end to good in the adytum of his soul, can 
 stand firm on the clear mountain top of rational convic- 
 tion of duty, and, while he sees the gust of natural pas- 
 sion, rolling in dense and black masses, flashing and 
 thundering and rending all below, can determine to do 
 what is right because it is right, and can bow down and 
 serve the common good, even at the severest sacrifice of 
 all the natural heart holds most dear, because the com- 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERV. 57 
 
 mon good is and should be paramount to all individual 
 
 interests. 
 
 Thus the essence of freedom lies in the exact balancinor 
 of the natural man on the one hand, by the spiritual man 
 on the other. True freedom is equilibrium. It is a state 
 in the body politic like to sound health in the physical 
 body. For, in health, every part of the body is nicely 
 balanced. The pulse, which is the index of the body's 
 health, is regular. Whenever the pulse is too fast or too 
 slow, too strong or too feeble, it is a sure symptom of 
 disease. And the basis of that health of the body 
 which consists in the equilibrium of all its parts, is the 
 great law that each part acts in its respective province 
 for the good of the whole and not for its own gratification. 
 Thus the eye sees — the ear hears — the nose smells — the 
 tongue tastes — the hands procure and convey food, and 
 the legs hold up the body or make it locomotive, each and 
 all, for the good of the whole, and not for their own gra- 
 tification. Each is sustained by the commonwealth, and 
 is made happy from the common stock of happiness. 
 Whenever any part begins, as it were, to think of and act 
 for itself, that instant the equilibrium of the other parts 
 is disturbed, and disease commences. Thus, for instance, 
 when the bones, which, when in health, have little or no 
 feeling in them, become inflamed, they are exquisitely 
 painful, and, by drawing an undue sympathy from the 
 other parts, taking the blood from the heart and the 
 nervous energy from the brain which should be given 
 and exerted for the common good, and concentering them 
 upon themselves, they lay the whole body prostrate on 
 the bed of sickness. So of the eye, when it is inflamed, 
 and there is an undue congestion of blood in it, the whole 
 equilibrium of the body is destroyed, and every other 
 member, and the body as a whole, is powerless in its 
 8 
 
58 A J)LS(:OURSE ON 
 
 united and harmonious action for the common good. In 
 short, the body is no longer free, when the self-love of 
 any of its parts destroys the equilibrium which should 
 reign in all its parts. And so it is that self-love is essen- 
 tially destructive of all freedom : and, we may add, of all 
 true federal union among independent states. But as 
 this subject has been fully discussed on another occasion 
 and in another place, it will not be entered upon here.* 
 
 If, therefore, we would be free indeed, either as indi- 
 viduals or as a nation, we must extract this root of bitter- 
 ness from our souls, our minds and all our conduct. The 
 mathematical axiom, that the whole is equal to the sum 
 of its parts, applies to our country. Such as is the cha- 
 racter of the individual men or states who compose it, 
 such will be the character and quality of the whole coun- 
 try. Its common wealth is the aggregate of its indivi- 
 dual wealths. Its common virtue is the aggregate of its 
 individual virtues. Its common power, prosperity and 
 happiness, depend solely upon the intelligence, the virtue 
 and the true patriotism of its component parts. In view, 
 then, of our country's freedom, greatness and true glory, 
 the great lesson we have to learn, the great duty we have 
 to do, is the careful heeding, by each one, of the wise 
 monition "Physician, heal thyself!" No people can 
 ever be oppressed by tyrants who are not themselves 
 
 * A good deal was said, here and in other parts of the discourse, in the way 
 of illustration of the general principle by its application to the family circle and 
 to the country at large; and it would, doubtless, be useful'to some of the readers 
 of this discourse if what was thus said could be seen in its connection : but these 
 things are among the extemporaneous matters which the author finds it impossi- 
 ble now to recall ; and, if he could, he would be loth to insert them, on account 
 of the too great size to which his additions have now swelled this production. 
 Any wishing to see the subject above alluded to expanded, may read his printed 
 new-year's sermon entitled "The True Nature of National Union and Pros- 
 -perity," which may be procured, where the few remaining copies of this discourse 
 will be for sale, at E. Ferrett & Co.'s, 40 South Fourth Street, Philadelphia. 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 59 
 
 individually influenced by the principle of tyranny. All 
 arbitrary or bad government is salutary reaction upon 
 the evils of the governed ; and the only effectual way to 
 get rid of the bad government is for the governed, each 
 from himself, to remove the evils on which it is permitted 
 to react. Americans as a people never can be enslaved 
 while they are individually free! This grand truth ap- 
 plies as well to the individual states in our great confe- 
 deracy as to the individual men in our great nation. If 
 each state is itself free from all injustice in its individual 
 polity, and, like some particular member of the human 
 body, acts for the common good of all the states in the 
 healthy equilibrium of a well balanced deference and 
 subordination of its partial to their general interests, it 
 is impossible that any one state can ever be oppressed by 
 the rest, or ever domineer over them. The only thing 
 that can ever impair the freedom of the collective as of 
 the individual man, is some one preferring and seeking 
 its own interest at the expense of the common good. 
 Therefore, in all civil and political sickness, the grand 
 maxim, in reforming abuses, is, " Physician, heal thy- 
 self!" Especially, Heal thyself, American People ! 
 Let each and every one put away his own evils as sins against 
 the common good! If every individual or collective Ame- 
 rican acts on this principle, so as to deny himself, take 
 up his cross daily, and follow the Great Physician of 
 Souls in laying down his life for the brethren, then our 
 beloved country cannot fail to be every thing one would 
 wish her to be — prosperous, great and happy ! 
 
 This, then, is true patriotism. In this age, when al- 
 most every thing is got up for the people, here is patriot- 
 ism for the people, in contradistinction to the patriotism 
 of their rulers or servants. It is the best sort of patriot- 
 ism for the servants too — the patriotism of self-sacrifice. 
 
GO A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 It is not confined to the tented field, the post of high 
 honor, the arena of glory, of danger, or of death. The 
 secluded and quiet shades of domestic life are its theatre 
 as well as the halls of Legislation or the plains of execu- 
 tive power. This is patriotism for the female as well as 
 the male — in which she can excel, and rise preeminent 
 in glory. For whether she be daughter, sister, wife, or 
 mother, she can not only sacrifice herself for the best 
 good of her country, but she can infuse the spirit of self- 
 sacrifice, in its purest forms, into men of every degree. 
 The woman gives man his body in the sacrifice of her- 
 self, and she may infuse spirit and life into his soul by 
 the same means. How much do we owe our love of coun- 
 try to our mothers ! How manifestly did the mother of 
 Washington infuse into him his patriotism! And every 
 true woman and good mother can make a patriot of her 
 son, by teaching him the lessons, and early inuring him 
 to the duties, of self-sacrifice. She may not prove her love 
 of country by pouring out her physical blood in gather- 
 ing encrimsoned laurels on the field of earthly fame ; but 
 she can more fully prove it by co-working with the Spirit 
 of God, in silence and in secret, when he curiously fa- 
 shions, in the lower parts of the earth, all the members 
 of the human soul into the image and likeness of his own 
 self-denying virtues, by the innocence of infancy and the 
 noble impulses and the generous fellow-feelings of youth! 
 Yes, true patriotism is self-denial — is self-sacrifice! 
 This is true devotion. This is that sacrifice of our own 
 lives — that pouring out of our own blood — that giving of 
 our own treasure — by which our beloved country wall be 
 most effectually served and secured in all her best and 
 dearest and most lasting interests! Yes, my brethren, in 
 whatever time, place, circumstance or duty — when the 
 altar is set for the sacrifice to be bound with cords to its 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 61 
 
 horns — the wood to be set in order upon it — and we have 
 come to invoke the fire from heaven that is to kindle it, 
 and to offer np the incense of our holy worship at the 
 shrine of our country's good — the sacrifice we are to make 
 is the sacrifice of ourselves — the incense we are to off"er 
 is the burning odor of broken and contrite hearts — the 
 offering we are to heave is the faithful discharge of every 
 known duty, in public or private life, from a supreme 
 regard to God and our neighbor, which is the seeking, in 
 all things, to promote the common interest by the surren- 
 dering or subordinating thereto of every and all partial 
 and individual interests. This is that straight gate — this 
 that narrow way — through which it becomes us to enter, 
 and in which it behooves us consistently and persever- 
 ingly to walk, however few there may be found going in 
 thereat. For the sure foundations of a nation's glory, and 
 honor, and safety, are the vital principles of the true 
 church. And it is only in the true patriotism of her 
 members that there can be any guarantee for our coun- 
 try's security from the danger that seems to impend over 
 her through that wide gate and broad way of self-seeking 
 and self-serving at and in wdiich so very many are now 
 entering and rushing to her destruction! 
 
 Finally, Freedom is the child of God, the heir of his 
 virtues and his felicities, but apparently helpless and in- 
 capable of coming into its legitimate inheritance, unless 
 nursed by heaven, trained by order, practised by wisdom, 
 and perfected by love. The Lord, in his infinite mercy, 
 has given freedom to our country as a plain and ground- 
 work for our church. For civil freedom must precede 
 spiritual freedom, as the earth must be formed before man 
 can live and do good upon it. Civil freedom is the silk- 
 worm, in which lie latent moral and spiritual freedom as 
 the crvsalis and the butterfly. Civil freedom is the com- 
 
62 A DISCOURSE ON 
 
 moil air, in which moral freedom and spiritual freedom 
 lie unseen, or gradually come, or work unobserved, as 
 the electric and magnetic fluids. And it is the duty and 
 the privilege of the church, as a heart and lungs, to give 
 the life of heaven to the body politic. 
 
 We are, then, incessantly to make a new declaration 
 of independence. In every celebration of the birth day 
 of the Father of our Country, we are to give forth a prac- 
 tical commemoration of the principles involved and lu- 
 minous in that true american freedom, of which he was 
 the focal image and purest or truest earthly type. As 
 our honored fathers declared themselves free from the 
 sway of despotic natural dominion, and achieved and 
 maintained their independence at every natural sacrifice ; 
 so must we declare ourselves free from the sway of de- 
 spotic spiritual dominion, and achieve and maintain our 
 independence of that, at every spiritual sacrifice. We 
 must vitally declare our independence of all that " sin 
 which doth most easily beset us," and, by holding in 
 bondage our true spiritual man, makes us slaves indeed! 
 
 Let us, then, while we thank the Lord for giving us 
 this natural plane to stand and work on, fail not to work 
 manfully in securing all that exemption from sin — from 
 selfishness — from worldlimindedness — in ourselves as 
 members of the truly free church, which may prove a 
 savor of life to our countrymen around us, however much 
 the general mass of them may be immersed in those un- 
 heavenly principles — as the ten righteous men, still found 
 in Sodom, sufiiced, for a time, to ward oflf that devoted 
 city's impending ruin. And while we set our faces 
 against all mob-law and mobile violence — while we reso- 
 lutely oppose that freedom which consists in the natural 
 man's license to do as he pleases, and is licentiousness — 
 while we cease not to condemn all that partizan politics 
 
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 63 
 
 which undermines the constitution of our country by 
 making the common good secondary to private interests 
 — let us so practise ourselves, and so disseminate among 
 our countrymen, the heavenly principles of our Holy Je- 
 rusalem, that all the world may be enabled to exclaim, 
 in respect to our beloved country, " Happy is that people 
 who are in such a case ! Yea, happy is that people, 
 whose God is the Lord! " (Ps. cxix. 15.) 
 
THIS DISCOURSE 
 
 MAY BE HAD OF 
 
 E. FERRETT & CO. 
 
 NO. 40 SOUTH EIGHTH STREET, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 As it has swelled to double the proposed size, the price 
 of it, to all who have not subscribed and paid for it in 
 advance, hfortij cents. 
 
 At the same place the following books are for sale : 
 
 SWEDENBORG'S UNIVERSAL THEOLOGY, (London Edition) $2.50 
 
 DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM Do. 1.50 
 
 DIVINE PROVIDENCE Do. 1.50 
 
 ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 7 50 
 
 PRINCIPIA 7.00 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY 3.25 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE INFINITE 1.62 
 SPIRITUAL DIARY, VoL L, (Smithson's trans.) 2.00 
 
 NOBLE'S PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 1.00 
 
 APPEAL 100 
 
 MASON'S JOB ABBOT 50 
 
 DE CHARMS'S SERMONS 1 00 
 
 TRUE GROUNDS OF NATIONAL UNION 12 
 
 NEWCHURCHMAN, VOLS. I. & II. at $2.00 per vol. 4.00 
 
 NEWCHURCHMAN-EXTRA, one volume of 700 pages, 2 00 
 JOURNALS OF CONVENTIONS, Vol. I., in calf $2.00, in sheep $1.50 
 
 *^* Any Books of the New Jerusalem, published in 
 England, Germany, France or America, in the latin, ger- 
 man, french or english languages, will be furnished to 
 order. 
 
 Mmj 18, 1850. 
 
DISCOURSE 
 
 FHE TRUE NATURE 
 
 FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 
 
 DKLlVEliKl) BKKORE 
 
 T II E W A S H I N G T ON SO VI E T Y 
 
 THE NEW JERUSALEM, 
 
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 ONK HUiNDRED AND EIGHTEENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 WASHINGTON'S BIRTH. 
 
 RICHARD ]JE CHARMS, 
 
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