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 ^ ADDRESS 
 
 Mr. President : "We are driven this day to God. Apart 
 from His Word, and His grace to make His "Word effectual, 
 and to keep it even in the hearts of His children from perver- 
 sion, there is no hope in the heart of any political party, nor 
 any Christian party, for the poor slave. We have seen that 
 men of piety, age, grey hairs, experience, eloquence, can plead 
 the very authority of the Word of God for concealing and de- 
 nying that Word ; can call upon Christ to bear witness that 
 their first Christian duty is to take down His light from the 
 candlestick and to put it under a bushel ; can deliberately in 
 the name of God so pervert the salt of Christian truth as to 
 make it nothing but an additional corrupting element on the 
 dunghill of the world's corruptions. We have seen an eloquent 
 Bishop, with silver locks, pleading for silence on the sin of slav- 
 ery, and justifying the Executive Committee of the Tract So- 
 ciety, as possessing an indestructible negative against the in- 
 structions of their constituents, and in opposition to the will and 
 Word of God, by virtue of being the managers of a great cir- 
 cumlocution office, the perfection of whose sagacity and strength 
 is in the art. How not to do it. We cannot but remember the 
 answer of God : " To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth 
 it not, to him it is sin ; " and the judgment of the Lord Jesus : 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my 
 brethren, ye did it not to me." 
 
 We have also seen venerable and Christian men not shrink- 
 ing to denounce the declaration that American slavery is a sin, 
 as ultra and inexpedient, and exposing the cause of righteous- 
 
 1 
 
I THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 ness to defeat and ruin. Paul rejoiced, in liis day, that he had 
 not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God. Tlie professed 
 followers of Paul in our day do not shun to rebuke such decla- 
 ration as fanatical and rash. Before such developments, were 
 it not that our trust is in God and not man, we should have no 
 more any strength, or life, or courage left in us. There is no 
 hope, apart from God's "Word, and from the full and faithful 
 application of it. There is wanting the element of conscien- 
 tious, stubborn, heartfelt, eternal hostility against slavery as 
 sin, as reprobated and forbidden of God in the same catalogue 
 with lying, perjury, murder, whoremongering, piracy, man- 
 stealing, and guilt, that, by the law not of God only, but man, 
 is worthy of death. Where shall such an element be found ? 
 How shall it be created, quickened, trained ? Not in the school 
 of political self-seeking and expediency ; not under obedience 
 to fugitive slave laws ; not under proclamations and assertions 
 of allegiance to Dred Scott decisions ; not in the school of un- 
 righteous and oppressive statutes ; not under the law of silence 
 on the Word of God — silence in the pulpit — silence in the 
 Tract House ; but under the law of fire and thunder in the 
 manifestation of the truth to every man's conscience in the 
 sight of God — by revealing the wrath of God from heaven 
 against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, and against 
 this stupendous iniquity as foremost and most germinating in 
 enormity and malignity, most sweeping and accumulating in 
 the habits and materials of sin and miser}', tlie elements and 
 securities of national ruin. Our only hope is in the revived, 
 living, faithful religion of a free, out-spoken, consistent church, 
 and a fearless, unmuzzled, faithful ministry. Our only hope is 
 in a conscience fastened to the Word of God, and a heart flam- 
 ing with its sacred fire ; a popular church and ministry, hold- 
 ing forth the word of life, and giving themselves up to its su- 
 premacy, in such an unrestricted abandonment of all things to 
 its sovereignty (not tlie popular sovereignty, but God's sover- 
 eignty), that it may have free course and be glorified. 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 3 
 
 The intensity of the plague with u<, the exasperation and 
 strength of the iniquity and the evil, are in the provisions for 
 its perpetuity, and the insurances of its increase. Not content 
 with enduring it ourselves, for one generation, we have l)y law 
 entailed it upon others ; and the generations to come, as God 
 distributes the consequences, must inevitably rise up and call 
 each preceding generation accursed. If this sin had a possible 
 death, like that of intemperance in the grave of the present 
 drunkard, and were not propagated by a legal fatalism forbid- 
 ding it to die out, or to be renounced, or the will to be broken 
 — a legal fatalism and missionary zeal united, providing fu- 
 ture victims for it in the fastest ratio of increase in human 
 population — then would the evil be comparatively trifling, 
 and the sin would speedily come to an end. But there is no 
 such limit, no such natural consumption or wearing out, no 
 such release by death ; the evil and the sin are carefully st- 
 cured against death, and injected, as the heart's blood, into the 
 veins of the next generation, and any attempt to stop the pro- 
 cess throws the whole system into convulsions. 
 
 TVe practice the iniquity upon children, innocent children, the 
 natives of our own land, unbought, unsold, unpaid for, without 
 consultation or consent of father or mother, or the shadow of a 
 permission from the Almighty ; and they, the new-born babes 
 of t^-'s system, are the compound interest year by year added 
 to tii^ ^nd its capital, which thus doubles upon us in the 
 
 next generation, and must treble in another. We make use of 
 the most sacred domestic affections, of maternal, filial, and, I 
 was going to say, connubial love — but the system forbids, and 
 IhixvQ io B2ij contubemal — for such rapid and accumulating 
 production of the iniquity, as shall be in some measure ade- 
 quate to the demand. The whole fomily relation, the whole 
 domestic state, is prostituted, poisoned, turned into a misery- 
 making machine for the agent of all evil. TThat God meant 
 should be the source and inspiration of happiness, becomes the 
 fountain of sin and woe. The sacred names of husband, wife. 
 
4 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 father, mother, son, daughter, babe, become the exponents of 
 various forces and values in the slave-breeding institute. And 
 the whole perfection, completeness, and concentration of this 
 creative power in this manufacturing interest, descends like a 
 trip-hammer on the children, beating them from the birth into 
 marketable articles, and stamping and sealing them as chattels, 
 foredoomed and fatalized to run till they wear out, as living 
 spindles, wheels, activities of labor and productiveness, in the 
 same horrible system. 
 
 And each generation of immortal marketable stuff is as 
 exactly foshioned in these grooves, moulds, channels, wefted, 
 netted, and drawn through, to come out the invariable product, 
 as the yards of carpeting are cut from the loom to be trodden 
 on, or as the coins drop from the die for the circulation of 
 society. This is the peculiarity of the sin of slavery in the 
 foremost Christian country on the face of the earth. In this 
 branch of native industry and manufacture we are self-reliant. 
 Disavowing a protective policy in almost everything else, we 
 are proudly patriotic for the security, superiority and abun- 
 dance of this most sacred native product of domestic manufac- 
 ture, and for neither the raw material nor the bleaching of it 
 will depend on any other country in the world. 
 
 This is the manner, these are the principles, on which we 
 obey the precepts and fulfil the glories of the 7 2d Psalm- 
 Instead of obeying God in delivering the children of the needy 
 from deceit and violence, we foredoom them to all the oppres- 
 sion endured by their fathers; instead of judging the poor with 
 righteousness and the children of the oppressed with equity, 
 we deliberately and solemnly give them over to oppression, as 
 incapable of brotherhood and citizenship, and having no rights 
 that white men are bound to respect. Instead of removing 
 every yoke, we predestinate them for the yoke, and perpetu- 
 ate the yoke for them, as a fixture prepared from the birth — 
 the controlling, governing, supreme domestic law — the guid- 
 ing institution and policy of the house, the State, the nation. 
 
AND THE DUTY OP^ THE MINISTRY. 5 
 
 By thus laying our grasp on an unborn race ; by saying 
 beforehand to immortal beings, the work of the Creator, you 
 cannot come into God's world but as infant slaves, articles of 
 property and merchandise, but with a curse of our national 
 justice and equity branding you for the slave-pen, and sepa- 
 rating you from the manhood of all mankind ; by this robbery 
 from God and man we become a nation of men-stealers — a 
 community of baptized Thugs for the kidnapping of the chil- 
 dren of four millions of people, and the assassination of their 
 personality. 
 
 If this were done now, for the first time, to a nation by 
 themselves ; if we made a descent upon Africa, China, India, 
 or elsew^here, and carried off into hopeless slavery the children 
 of four millions, the universe would utter a roar of terror and 
 indignation at such a crime. But organize it into a system — 
 make this robbery and moral assassination a fixture of law and 
 policy from generation to generation, and set up its support as 
 the w^atchword of a powerful political party, the test of faith- 
 fulness and patriotism, and the security of an unlimited com- 
 mand of the whole patronage of the United States Govern- 
 ment, and forthwith the sanction and sustaining of it become 
 the shining virtue of compromise and expediency, and he is 
 the dangerous man and the madman in the community who 
 undertakes to disturb this arrangement, or to agitate the con- 
 science in regard to it. Forthwith, it is no longer the sin 
 which is regarded with astonishment and horror, but the de- 
 nunciation of it as sin ! It is no longer the perpetrators of 
 such a crime, and its supporters, who are to be the objects of 
 reproach and condemnation, but those who cause the truth to 
 bear against the crime — those who call it by the name with 
 which God has branded it, and visit it with the reprobation 
 that God has laid upon it. 
 
 And especially the political w^orld and the Pharisees of 
 political churches stand in horror of the very bad spirit, the 
 unchristian spirit, of those who denounce this wickedness with 
 1* 
 
6 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 the direct application of the word of God. It is a subject 
 which must be excluded from the pulpit, because it is a sin 
 enthroned in state, a political sin, to be treated only by politi- 
 cal quacks, with political drenches, platforms, cataplasms and 
 compromises, which the only duty of the Church and the 
 ministry is quietly to indorse and sanction, for the sake of 
 peace. 
 
 The system of Slavery is now at length asserted to be the 
 chosen missionary institute of the Lord Almighty. And, ad- 
 mitting it to be such, we are certainly foremost of all the na- 
 tions in carrying forward the great missionary work. If the 
 appointed work to be done for the children of the needy is 
 that of branding and training them as chattels and brute beasts 
 for the market, we have no rivals in this honor. This is, in 
 fact, the greatest, vastest, most persevering missionary work 
 that we perform. Our instrumentality in binding down in 
 hopeless bondage the children of four millions of immortal 
 beings, guilty of a skin not colored like our own, is our largest 
 instrumentality, thus far, in the glories of the millenium. 
 
 By our laws providing that the slave and its increase shall 
 be deemed and doomed our personal chattels forever, we con- 
 stitute for them a millenium of sin and misery. We convert 
 them into a community, in which it is impossible that the fun- 
 damental laws of Christianity should be recognized and 
 obeyed, or the most commonly acknowledged and most sacred 
 institutions of the Christian state be regarded. The laws of 
 God for husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, 
 children, cannot be applied, cannot be obeyed, in such a com- 
 munity. '^ Husbands, love your wives," is a divine injunction. 
 But for those most miserable outcasts of humanity, the Ameri- 
 can slaves, there can be no such law, but an admonition against 
 it. God's claims, so expressed, interfere with man's property 
 in man. Husbands, beware of imagining that you have any 
 rights, any authority, in regard to the chattels you are per- 
 mitted to live with ; beware of ever so loving them as to be 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 7 
 
 unwilling to sacrifice them at a moment's warning to the ava- 
 rice, the need, or the passions, of your owners. Ye are not 
 permitted to love, but only in subjection to the price of the 
 market, the necessities of your master, and the grand rule of 
 your domestic institution, the slave and its increase. 
 
 Wives, be obedient to your husbands. What ? Obedience 
 from a chattel to a chattel ? Wives ye are none, and this 
 divine law belongs not to you, but for the profit of your mas- 
 ters. Your obedience and your increase belong to them, and 
 to none else. 
 
 Children, obey your parents. But slaves have no children, 
 and their children have no parents, except only as the bales 
 of cotton have a parent in the gin and the factory, where they 
 were shaped and bonded for the market. These commands 
 and precepts are all and only for the masters, not the slaves. 
 Slaves have no ties, no affections, no duties, no obligations, no 
 belongings, but for their owners, whose property they are, and 
 for whom and at their bidding every faculty, capacity, emotion, 
 must be devoted, occupied, tasted, improved, sold at the high- 
 est premium to the highest bidder whenever, however, and 
 wherever, the owner's interest requires it. 
 
 And it is not isolated beings that we devote thus, for a mere 
 lifetime, to such degradation and cruelty, but we create a per- 
 petual, unfailing, and self-renewing spring of this wickedness. 
 It is not a transitory shower of blistering drops that we cause 
 to pass over the land, but an Artesian well that we sink of do- 
 mestic shame and misery for future generations. In the word 
 of God it is said, referring to the glory and blessedness of the 
 establishment of righteousness and freedom as the fundamental 
 fixtures of society, " If thou take away from the midst of thee 
 the yoke, thou shalt raise up the foundations of many genera- 
 tions." But we, by foredooming unborn children to the yoke, 
 and preparing it for them, are securing a succession of curses 
 and crimes, crimes and curses, as the heritage of the social 
 state. AVe have no more right to enact by law that the off- 
 
8 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 spring of slaves shall be slaves, than we have to make a law 
 that the offspring of the free whites shall be slaves. If such a 
 law were passed in the State of New York, a law that the 
 children of those engaged in manual labor should from the birth 
 be taken and held as chattels, to be bought and sold as the 
 property of those capitalists for whom their parents have been 
 laboring, could such a law sanction such a crime ? Could it 
 make it any other than man-stealing ? Could it be pleaded 
 that it is not man-stealing, because it is children-stealing ? 
 What is it when these children grow up ? 
 
 And if they have children, does the fact that their parents 
 were stolen before them give the stealers of the parents any 
 claim upon the next generation? Does the fact that their 
 parents were stolen before them, take away their rights as hu- 
 man beings, and turn the stealing of them into a natural and 
 just claim of property ? Nothing can transmit the right of 
 theft ; no law can sanction it ; even if we had a right to steal 
 the parents from themselves, this could give no right to steal 
 the children from the parents and from God. This is the 
 deep damnation of our guilt. The offence cries up to heaven. 
 By stealing children from the birth, we are a nation of men- 
 STEALERS, and we renew, perpetuate and increase the guilt 
 from generation to generation. We perpetuate the sin and the 
 cruelty upon five times the number that our ancestors did, and 
 insure its being perpetrated by five times more, and then 
 thank God for the success of this providential missionary insti- 
 tution. 
 
 The guilt is increasing, but all the while the conscience in 
 regard to it is diminishing and being seared. The sin, by being 
 enlarged in surface and in quantity, seems lessened in inten- 
 sity. We are more guilty than our fathers in the practice of 
 it, and yet we contrive to make ourselves imagine that we are 
 less guilty and more pious than they. The iniquity is a moral 
 cancer that is eating at the vitals of our piety, Avhile the only 
 treatment we tolerate is increased doses of chloroform, till the 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 9 
 
 whole system is stupefied under its influence. "When a new 
 outrage is committed, wc just send to the apothecaries for more 
 laudanum, or swallow, through our representatives, a Lecomp- 
 ton drench and sweat, or suffer Congress to administer an 
 English swindle. Never was a sick and groaning victim more 
 completely at the mercy of unprincipled quacks. Every six 
 months some new experiment of fraud, despotism, bribery, un- 
 principled and ignorant political surgery, and we are hauled 
 and tossed about, and cut and skinned, as if we were a dead 
 body in the dissecting-room, and Congress nothing but a class 
 of raw, headstrong, roaring medical students, with their knives 
 in their hands, and Dunglison's Anatomy in their pockets. The 
 body does not wince, does not kick, does not even protest ; and 
 so they keep cutting and carving, no outrage as yet attempted 
 being so mons^trous as to have gone beyond the people's tame 
 endurance. 
 
 Our iniquitous and cruel career against the African race 
 came to its climax in the Dred Scott decision ; for when in- 
 iquity takes the place of national law, and is enthroned in the 
 tribunal of justice, it cannot well go higher ; and now that 
 decision, unresisted, uncorrected, is producing its fruits. It is 
 like the star wormwood cast upon all fountains of waters, and 
 men drink and die. Our public officials of justice and of pol- 
 icy, from the highest to the lowest, every time they are about 
 to enact a new violence against the oppressed, only have to 
 refer to the Dred Scott decision, and the basest, meanest, most 
 detestable acts of fraud and cruelty, are converted into right- 
 eousness. 
 
 From the Secretary of State down through files of marshals, 
 judges, bailiffs, lawyers, to the conductor of the street rail-car, 
 the word passes, and the policy is established, and it is oflicially 
 announced, and the judicial dictum is reverberated and ap- 
 plauded and applied, that black men have no rights that white 
 men are bound to respect. This dictum is fast being welded 
 into chains, into political precedents sealed and made sure, and 
 
10 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 snare after snare in the iron net is woven on by lies, by perver- 
 sions of the Constitution and of history, by new measures of 
 usurpation unresisted, by presumptuous, unauthorized interpre- 
 tation of hiw, till the very breath of the black man is almost 
 beaten out of his body, and he is refused the privilege of ex- 
 panding his lungs in a Republican atmosphere. Our judges, 
 Cabinet ministers, attorneys-general and local, and Secretaries 
 of State, are hunting up examples of old injustice, for prece- 
 dents of new villany. They thus set immorality and cruelty in 
 the fountains of justice, infecting all its elements with death, 
 just as vile assassins poison the wells of their neighbors by 
 throwing dead dogs into them, or the carcasses of cats and 
 skunks. 
 
 As God declared in a case fearfully similar, they have turned 
 judgment into gall and wormwood, and the fruit of righteous- 
 ness into hemlock. They hunt every man his brother, with a 
 net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the 
 prince asketh, and the judge asketh, for a reward ; and the 
 great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire, and so they 
 wrap it up. The best of them is as a brier ; the most upright 
 is sharper than a thorn hedge; they trust in vanity, and speak 
 lies ; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity ; they 
 hatch cockatrice's eggs, and weave the spider's web ; he that 
 eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh 
 out into a viper. There is no judgment in their goings ; they 
 have made them crooked paths, speaking oppression, conceiv- 
 ing and uttering from the heart words of falsehood, so that 
 judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar 
 off. They are never so happy as when they conceive absolute 
 mischief, the dregs of profound social ignorance, prejudice and 
 depravity, framing mischief by a law which thenceforward they 
 impose as the supreme political and moral state god. They 
 set up the sin of slavery as law, enforce it by the Constitution, 
 under judicial opinions, to which they swear allegiance, and if 
 they cannot discover precedents, they make them. 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 11 
 
 The Secretary of State dares publicly to afFirin that no black 
 man ever received a passport, and caimot, as a citizen, receive 
 one, and shall not. The Dred Scott decision has prepared this 
 lid for the black man's living sepulchre, and Secretary Cass 
 acts the undertaker for the body, and screws down the coffin 
 with an incontrovertible falsehood. Then the Secretary of the 
 Treasury declares that a free negro cannot receive a register 
 for his own vessel, nor be master of his own vessel, nor, as such, 
 have any title to his own property by United States marine 
 papers, for, by the Dred Scott decision, he is no citizen, and 
 can be none, and to be the rightful owner and master of his 
 own maritime property, a man must be a citizen. As he has 
 none of the rights of a citizen, any seafaring man may own 
 him, but he cannot himself be the owner of so much as a plank 
 or a nail in his own vessel. Then comes, on the heels of this 
 outrage, the United States Land Commissioner, and from the 
 General Land Office, with the same despotic authority, under 
 the same infernal act, declares that persons of color have no 
 right of purchase and ownership in the public lands, that privi- 
 lege also being restricted by positive law to citizens of the 
 United States, or those that intend to become such ; and by the 
 Dred Scott decision, a man with a colored skin neither is, nor 
 can become, nor can without treason intend to become, a citi- 
 zen. So, by this decision, and these magisterial interpretations 
 and enforcements of it, the human being with a skin not colored 
 like our own is alienated and expelled from land and sea — is 
 an exile everywhere, and, even on the great highway of na- 
 tions, no better than a log, or a snag, or a shred of drifting sea- 
 weed, over which the keel of a Christian civilization plunges, 
 with all on board grinning approbation of the cruelty. And 
 certainly, if God's word be not thundered against such crimes, 
 the Church and the ministry do, by their silence, set the seal 
 of a Christian approbation on all this. Our revivals of reli- 
 gion become accessory to it, if a fawning, cringing, whining 
 piety, trembling in the fear of man, refuses to beai' testimony 
 against such wickedness. 
 
12 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 And thus, more and more, the common heart and conscience 
 are hardened against all remorse and repentance in such vil- 
 lany, and each new Administration of the Slave Power be- 
 comes the executor of some new and more atrocious scheme of 
 fraud and tyranny, left in trust as a legacy by its predecessor. 
 And men that have kept silent up to the present crisis, have 
 had their capacity of dumbness, their grace of silence, thor- 
 oughly tried ; they are, indeed, dumb dogs, that no provocation is 
 likely to set to barking. If they have not yet spoken, they 
 will forever hold their peace. What form of this wickedness 
 can be transacted worse than the shapes in which it has already 
 been enthroned and legalized ? Would the open revival of the 
 slave trade be any greater atrocity than the decision that a 
 human being, with a colored skin, though born in this country, 
 and free born, and under this government, cannot be a citizen 
 of the United States, and has no rights that white men are 
 bound to respect ? 
 
 When this iniquity was, by this declaration and decision, 
 publicly inaugurated in the supreme tribunal of national jus- 
 tice ; when, in defiance of God's appointment and consecration 
 of the judgment seat for himself, this most astounding cruelty 
 and robbery were proclaimed as the rule of national justice, 
 by which men were let loose for all manner of villany against 
 a whole race of human beings, we imagined that the pulpit 
 would have spoken out, if it never had before, in reprobation 
 of an enormity in a Christian nation so atrocious, so unrivalled. 
 The Sabbath after that prodigious judicial crime, it seemed as 
 if the very Bibles would have burst open of their own accord, 
 and that in living fire the lightning of God's Word Avould al- 
 most have burned its sentence on the walls, and hissed along 
 the congi'egations. We thought that even men whose lips had 
 been sealed up to that time would have broken that silenc^ 
 forever, and directed the thunders of divine truth against such 
 fearful public enshrinement and enforcement of undissembled, 
 undisputed inhumanity and falsehood. Instead of that, there 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 13 
 
 was a tame and almost unquestioning acquiescence ; and the 
 men that did speak out were themselves denounced as mad 
 accusers and revilers of God's appointed dignities. Instead of 
 denouncing the sin, men, ministers, and editors denounced the 
 denunciation of it as the greatest sin. It had come to pass 
 literally, as in the 59tli chapter of Isaiah, that judgment was 
 turned away backward, and justice stood afar off, for truth was 
 fallen in the street, and equity could not enter. Yea, truth 
 faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey ; 
 and the Lord saw it, and it displeased Ilim that there was no 
 judgment. 
 
 If ever the Church and the ministry were going to speak 
 out, it should have been then ; and if not then, I do not know 
 that any revival of religion, on the same principles, of the same 
 type, will produce utterance. But the calamity to a nation, 
 when the Church and ministry are thus unfaithful to their 
 trust, is not to be computed ; nor, on the other hand, is the 
 blessing to a nation possible to be measured, when it has a 
 Church and ministry that it cannot corrupt nor silence. The 
 Church is God's own enshrinement among a people of the liv- 
 ing sense of right and wrong, the perception of God's claims, 
 and the sensibility to them ; and where that sensibility is vivid 
 among the people, there is always the knowledge of their own 
 rights and the spirit to defend them. But where that sensibil- 
 ity to sin, and to God's claims, dies out, where the Church 
 does not apply God's Word against sin, there both the con- 
 science toward God and the spirit of liberty are debauched and 
 wasted, and the nation ripens for destruction. Even the most 
 fatal oppression, the most vital injuries are not felt, or are 
 submitted to with servile endurance. 
 
 Can we go any lower, any deeper, than the Dred Scott de- 
 cision and its consequences ? The disease having, like a run 
 of typhus fever, reached its lowest stage, will there be a reac- 
 tion of nature toward health? Is there strengtli enough ? At 
 this point, docs conscience act under the Word of God ? At 
 2 
 
14 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 this point, is the Word of God being apphed? The Divine 
 Spirit is present, as a power of individual salvation, but still, 
 under habitual indifference, there may be a palsv of the con- 
 science in regard to this sin. An individual was met recently 
 by a friend, who asked him how it was with him, and he said 
 he had been busy all winter in the revival, and was at a morn- 
 ing prayer meeting every morning at 6 o'clock. In the course 
 of the conversation, he was asked how he felt in regard to the 
 iniquity going on in Congress. Oh, said he, I don't trouble 
 myself about that at all, and as long as I and my family get 
 enough to eat and to drink. Congress may do what they choose; 
 I have no concern about it. Now, of what possible avail can 
 be whole churches of such Christians, or what effect can tons 
 of such piety have upon the morals of the community, or how 
 will revivals of religion reach the sins of the nation, if piety 
 is content with eating and drinking, and attendance at 8 o'clock 
 morning ^^(rayers, while the nation marches steadily to wrath 
 and ruin ? 
 
 If the Church at large are under such infatuation, then, in- 
 deed, the nation is ready to perish ; for the Church is the salt 
 of the earth, the conscience of the nation ; and if that salt 
 have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? If the con- 
 science of the Church is corrupted and darkened, the nation 
 has no means of knowing its own evils, and may be far ad- 
 vanced towards irremediable destruction. The conscience of 
 the Church is the only conscience that pretends to be guided 
 by the Word of God, and by that Word a living conscience in 
 the Church and ministry must be the nation's watchman. 
 
 One of the darkest and most distressing symptoms in the 
 progress of this iniquity is the insensibility of the popular 
 conscience under outrages that we once supposed, if any ap- 
 proximation to them were perpetrated, were even attempted, 
 would set the nation in a blaze. Even Mr. Webster used to 
 talk of the danger of experiments upon the conscience of the 
 country ; but we find no hazard attending them. Outrage 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 15 
 
 upon outrage is quietly endured, until the people become ac- 
 customed to be trampled on, and conscience utters no remon- 
 strance A fearful paralyzing power, a spell of stupefaction, 
 an insensibility unto death, is on the nation : and the Church 
 and the ministry that ought to act as the nation's conscience, 
 are drugged and possessed with the devil of silence ; so that 
 the people are not arrested, not alarmed, not made sensible of 
 what Satan's work is being accomplished upon them. This is 
 a fearful treason against God and his Word, a terrible be- 
 trayal of principle. 
 
 It is as if the nerves of sensation in our system refused to 
 warn us of injury by the sense of pain, so that, as under the 
 power of chloroform, our bodies might be hacked and maimed, 
 and we not aware of it ; as in a drunken stupor a man might 
 be fatally burned, and not know it until too late. So, if the 
 Church and the ministry, being God's sentinels to the nation, 
 are bribed or drugged into silence, the nation, by such treach- 
 ery, will be fatally ruined ere it is aware, and will utterly 
 perish in its own corruption. Yet still we talk of the world's 
 conversion, and here in these anniversaries we drive all the 
 multiform machinery of the Societies we have set in motion, 
 while every day our very power to manage them and to keep 
 them from the villany of our own example grows less, and we 
 go boasting of our health and strength and prosperity, with 
 this terrific disease, under which we may be staggering as a 
 drunken man upon the very last verge of God's endurance. 
 
 The indulgence, maintenance, protection and defence of this 
 sin, is the one great obstacle against the missionary influence 
 and work. It cripples us, it manacles our energies, it palsies 
 our efforts. We are in the condition of a man whose whole 
 left side is paralyzed, so that all the strength and life of the 
 right side are occupied and tasked with keeping the palsied 
 half of the body from falling. We are like a man indulging in 
 the use of ardent spirits to a degree just bordering continually 
 on intoxication, so that all the soberness h.'ft is but just sufli- 
 
16 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 cient to keep him out of the gutter. We are unfit for God's 
 work of overcoming the idolatry of the nations, while we are in 
 slavish subjection to the worship of this ISIoloch at home. And 
 this is the upshot of all our splendid training, all our vast gifts 
 from God, all our preparations by truth, providence, and grace, 
 for the world's deHverance from sin and Satan ! Is it such an 
 agency, or the instrumentality of such a people, that can be re- 
 lied upon for the world's conversi* n ? Eighteen hundred years 
 Christ crucified has been known and preached on earth, as a 
 righteous Judge and Saviour for the poor and needy, the op- 
 pressed, and the children of the needy, and yet, in these last 
 days, and in the nation now vaunted as the foremost Christian 
 nation upon the face of the globe, the iniquity of slavery itself 
 has been revived and maintained as the missionary agency and 
 institution of the Gospel ! And all this comes from hiding in- 
 stead of revealing that divine life which is the light of the 
 world, which is the disclosure and destruction of sin, but being 
 withheld leaves the world in darkness, and the church to be 
 the nursing mother of the world's abominations. As in the 
 absence of the solar light there is nothing but a cellar vegeta- 
 tion, and the nourishing and running wild and free of monsters 
 that shun the light and love the darkness, so in the absence 
 or concealment of God's Word, a sickly, pallid, bloodless senti- 
 mentalism of compromise and expediency takes the place of 
 vigorous, virtuous life, and gigantic forms of iniquity breed 
 and thrive. The tremendous despotism of slavery is the result 
 of the policy of silence in the pulpit, silence of the ministry, 
 the delaying and withholding of the Word of God. 
 
 Where can such things end, if continued ? And if the con- 
 science of the people is not reached and roused, what hope is 
 there that the wickedness of the Government will ever be ar- 
 rested ? They will go just as far as the people will let them 
 — for their conscience is always lower and more insensible 
 than that of the people, but never higher. The conscience of 
 the people is the last defence of Liberty — the last element of 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 17 
 
 righteous power. If the conscience of the people can be set 
 right, then there is hope in God. If they disavow and tlii-ow 
 off this iniquity, God will not lay it to their charge ; but if 
 they do not resist it, God will certainly visit it upon them ; he 
 will let them be destroyed by it. They have sown the wind — 
 they shall reap the whirlwind. 
 
 Here, then, are demonstrated the responsibility and duty of 
 the church and the ministry, as God's appointed instrumental- 
 ity for training and awakening the conscience of the people. 
 How can national sins be reached in any other way ? And 
 how in this way, except only by the Word of God, which is 
 the sole instrument in the hands of the Spirit of God to con- 
 vince the world of sin ? And how is the Word of God to be 
 applied, except by the ministry, sustained by the church for 
 this purpose, and on the Sabbath, when God gathers the peo- 
 ple beneath its hearing and its power ? The whole salvation 
 of our country — the wdiole possibility of redemption from the 
 sin of slavery — rests on this question : Will the church and 
 the ministry be faithful ? Will the ministry be faithful to God ? 
 Will the church uphold and protect the ministry in such faith- 
 fulness ? The ministry must speak out, and speak with a will, 
 with a purpose, with a perseverance, and continued pressure on 
 the conscience. 
 
 The ministry must speak to move the country — not merely 
 to relieve their own consciences, to clear their own skirts by a 
 quiet declaration of opinion, or to enter a protest and then re- 
 tire. The ministry can move the country, but not by resolu- 
 tions in Associations or General Assemblies, while the pulpit 
 is as silent as the grave. There is no courage whatever, and 
 there may be very little faithfulness, in framing resolutions 
 which may be but an anodyne to the conscience — a dispensa- 
 tion from ever preaching on the subject. There are no general 
 resolutions in the New Testament to stand in the place of pul- 
 pit faithfulness in the application of God's Word ; but the rule 
 was always, and everywhere, to renounce the hidden things of 
 2* 
 
18 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor handling the Word of 
 God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending 
 ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And 
 again, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the Gospel 
 of God with much contention, and as we were allowed of God 
 to be put in trust with the Gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing 
 men, but God, which trieth our hearts. 
 
 Now, the Word of God is for aggression and conquest, and 
 not a compromise with sin. The Word of God is a park of 
 artillery — a swift-rushing mountain of thunderings and light- 
 nings against sin, to overcome it and get it out of the world, 
 and not a mere protest to save your own credit. The Word 
 of God is to be thundered forth by the ministry for the discom- 
 fiture of this great villany and impiety in the judgment seat, 
 Hand in the legislature, and in the sin of man-stealing ; and this 
 can be done in reliance upon God, and at his command, that 
 the nation may be brought to repentance, may cry out, like any 
 other sinners, Men and brethren, what shall we do ? and may 
 be redeemed from this mighty iniquity. It is manifest that 
 this requires an attention to it on the part of the church and 
 the ministry, and a space for it in the Sabbath, and a procla- 
 mation of God's truth in regard to it, such as never has been 
 given — never has been made. This work is yet to be done, 
 and the power and the glory of the Old Testament, the intense 
 fires of God's love of justice, and his wrath against injustice 
 and oppression, the forked and chain lightnings of the prophets, 
 and the thunderbolts of Hebrew history, are yet to be shot 
 upon this nation's sins. Who dare do it but a ministry com- 
 missioned of God, and illuminated and inspired by his Spirit ? 
 Who can do it but they only ? Whose appropriate business is 
 it to do this but theirs, and what is the duty of the church but 
 to support and protect them in doing this ? And when and 
 how can they do this, except on the Sabbath — their day, 
 God's day for instructing, reproving, and calling the world to 
 repentance ? 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 19 
 
 It is not a mincing, delicate, light notice of this iniquity that 
 God requires, or the broad, hardened, brazen, unblushing 
 abominations of the Government and the people demand, but 
 a reiterated, reverberating, loud thundering of God's truth. It 
 is very easy to say a soft, apologizing -word now and then in 
 regard to it, and excite no anger, no disturbance, and do no 
 good, rouse no man's conscience ; and not a few, in what they 
 do say or intimate on such a subject, seem to be begging pardon 
 of the congregation for such a painful allusion, instead of utter- 
 ing God's voice fearlessly, grandly, and declaring. Thou art 
 the man ! 
 
 In this matter, Christ's dividing line is true : He that is not 
 for me is against me. If men will not now speak out and act 
 out against slavery, their voice and influence are in favor of it. 
 If the ministers of the Gospel, instead of the policy of silence, 
 had poured out their vials, as God's commissioned angels, and 
 let the thunderings, lightnings and earthquakes shake the 
 heavens and the earth, this iniquity would long since have been 
 arrested. It is only under the repression and forced silence of 
 the Word of God that it has been able to advance with such 
 giant strides, till it has taken possession of the Senatorial, Rep- 
 resentative, Executive, and Judicial branches of our Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, Satan will never cast out Satan, and this iniquity is to 
 be stayed and turned back only by the Word of God, and by 
 the Church and ministry being faithful to that Word. "■• If 
 they had stood in my counsel," says Jehovah, " and had caused 
 my people to hear my words, then they should have turned 
 them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings." 
 Just so now. But this great and mighty result of repentance 
 for sin is not to be got at by silence in regard to the sin ; and they 
 who keep silence in a time of temptation and trial do, in fact, 
 defend and daub the sin with untempered mortar. They may 
 say that they are good Anti-Slavery men, as much opposed to 
 this iniquity as any one ; but their silence gives consent, and 
 
20 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 carries them over into the ranks of the enemy. Their preten- 
 sions of Anti-Slavery principles are, indeed, excellent, if the 
 principle itself could be got at for use. They say it is in them 
 in esse, as the diamond is in carbon ; and so indeed every lump 
 of charcoal, if it could speak, might say, " I am a diamond — 
 do not treat me as if I were merely a piece of charred wood. 
 In potential essence, the diamond is in my nature." 
 
 Ah, yes, my good friend, and if you would only tell me how 
 I may bring it out, and keep it in the form of a diamond — 
 how I may catch the essence, and make it stay put — you will 
 make my fortune. But, alas ! the world will never see any- 
 thing in you but charcoal ! Your diamond nature does not 
 speak out ; your charcoal does. 
 
 Just so, there are many in the ministry who will be much 
 offended if you tell them they are not opposed to slavery — 
 therefore, in effect, defend it. They will affirm that, in poten- 
 tial essence, the abhorrence of slavery is in them, though they 
 do not go to the extreme of ever speaking against it. 
 
 Aye, and the very difficulty is, that it never makes itself 
 known except by a most potential silence. It is as silent and 
 invisible as the diamond is in the charcoal, or the light in a 
 mass of solid anthracite. On this principle, there is not a dark 
 subterranean coal mine, or bed, or pit, in existence, but what 
 is a region of brilliant, glorious light ; but, unfortunately, it 
 needs a great many manipulations of science, a great many 
 torturing processes of art, and operations of fire and water, to 
 extract the material of light, and put it in shining order. 
 
 And just so with not a few, who should be lights in the 
 ministry, but are rather like invisible, unsmelted native ores. 
 If they might be subjected to the necessary roastings and 
 smeltings and purifications, and the word of God extracted 
 from them in visible, glorious form and shape, confronting and 
 exposing the gross and damning features of this sin, then indeed 
 it would be a powerful and conqu(M'ing testimony. But what is 
 principle good lor, if not to come forth in action in the time of 
 
AND THE DUTY OF THE MINISTRY. 21 
 
 trial, if not to withstand temptation, to rebuke iniquity, and 
 protect the weak and down-trodden from the wicked and the 
 strong? What is the worth of silent, inactive, concealed prin- 
 ciple, whole acres of it, what better than treachery, or salt that 
 has lost its savor, and is not fit even for a dunghill ? "What is 
 the worth of a million candles, each hidden under its own 
 bushel ? What is the light of the Christian Church and the 
 Christian ministry given for, but to be the light of the world ? 
 If it is hidden from the world out of fear, out of a selfish ex- 
 pediency, it is darkness ; and how great is that darkness . 
 
 It makes us think of the recent discovery that every cubic 
 mile of ocean contains more than two pounds weight of solid 
 silver. How potential! It makes the mouth of a miser water; 
 but he is forced to think. If I could only get at it ! Oh, thou 
 mine of incalculable wealth ! Two million tons of solid silver 
 in the Atlantic ! Ye potential, silvery waves, if I could but 
 evoke, by some concentrated, irresistible chemistry, your hid- 
 den riches! 
 
 Ay, but there's the rub. 'Tis of no more use to you than the 
 commonest puddle of sea-water ; whole leagues of it, nay, the 
 all-surroundinnj ocean, at your command, of no more value 
 than the smallest secluded nook before your own cottage on 
 the East River. And just so, a whole cubic mile of such 
 Anti-Slavery ministers with sealed lips, or as many as could 
 stand together in the dry bottom of the ocean, would be of no 
 use whatever with their principles of liberty that never speak 
 out — their upright hearts, but silent tongues and pulpits. 
 They are upright as the palm tree, but they speak not ; and 
 because of their own policy of silence, they hate him that re- 
 buketh in the gate ; they are not valiant for the truth upon the 
 earth, and, in consequence of their silence and conservative in- 
 fluence, the few that do speak out seem extravagant and eccen- 
 tric, and are marked as madmen or fanatics ; they become 
 objects of derision, as noticeable as poor Christian and Faithful 
 were in passing through Vanity Fair — simple, innocent crea- 
 
22 THE SIN OF SLAVERY, 
 
 tures who said, We buy the truth. Truth ! Go to the Tract 
 House ! 
 
 But truth is not only unpopular and inexpedient on such a 
 subject as the sin of Slavery, but exceedingly dangerous. It 
 is not proper to be brought into the pulpit, nor mentioned on 
 the Sabbath — that sacred day of rest, when every irritating 
 and disturbing theme should be kept far aloof from the Sanc- 
 tuary and from our hearts, for we come to the Church to be 
 comforted, and political preaching is an outrage on our feelings, 
 and a desecration of the day of God ; and preaching on the 
 sin of Slavery is political preaching, and if you preach such 
 preaching, it offends the pew-owners, and drives away the peo- 
 ple from the church, and prevents them from hiring pews, and 
 diminishes our revenues, so that, if you preach such preaching, 
 the best interests of the Church and society require that we 
 should unsettle you. 
 
 Well done, Simon Magus ! There you stand ; unveil your 
 face, step forth into the light ; only avow that you buy your 
 minister, and use him, or lay him on the shelf, just as you 
 would a case of umbrellas or a bale of silk, that you settle him 
 for pew revenues, and that your pulpit is up at auction to the 
 highest bidder for the man who will insure you the greatest 
 sum total of pew rentals, and your poAver is at an end. The 
 statement of such things is enough to make them a by-word 
 and a hissing. You never can get the people to admit that the 
 final end of God's Word is just simply to keep the finances of 
 a society above water, or as a locomotive to drag them up-hill. 
 God's Word is given for edifying and saving souls, and not 
 merely building temples and paying for them. And the minis- 
 ters of God's Word, if called to preach in Nineveh and fleeing 
 to Tarshish, will not much longer find the churches to be mere 
 packet ships in which they can snugly sleep out the storm, and 
 pay their ])assage by concealing their mission. 
 
 Concealment is not the law of God's Word, but maxifesta- 
 Tiox, and in times of danger and of treachery, you are com- 
 
AND THE DUTY OF TIIK MINISTRY. 23 
 
 pelled to vary the ordinary law of God's AVord, as rains and 
 gentle showers, and to come down in a perfect cataract, as if 
 all the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of 
 the great deep broken up. We may learn something here 
 from our colored brethren. During the war of our Revolution, 
 it is said that at a particular important point of his lines, 
 Washington found his sentinels, night after night, picked off by 
 a party that could not be detected. At length he committed 
 the care of that point to a sagacious, trusty negro, on service in 
 the army ; a negro citizen (let Secretary Cass mark it) was 
 particularly trusted by Washington. He told him the nature 
 of the danger, and bade him have all his wits about him, re- 
 membering the watchword, if any suspicious movement was 
 before him, which was to call out, Who goes there ? three 
 times, and then fire. The faithful, keen-witted negro reflected, 
 and made up his mind. Past midnight, his watchfnl ear caught 
 the stealthy advance of the enemy, and just waiting long 
 enough to be sure of his aim, he levelled his gun, and called 
 out, in one sentence, at one breath, AYho goes dere tree time ? 
 and then fired. The foe was shot and discovered, the alarm 
 given, and the post saved. Sometimes we must thus concen- 
 trate, and give the warning and the shot at the same moment ; 
 not here a little and there a little, but all at once, and blow 
 after blow followed up so rapidly that neither compromise nor 
 retreat shall be possible. 
 
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