The Lord's day is generally devoted to pursuits, occupations, and pleasures so dissonant from the sacred injunction, that the debased servant cannot even enjoy it as relaxation from labour. He has no choice: the filth of the week must be his companion, or the hours must be devoted to necessary ablutions; and thus the opportunities of evangelical instruction are inevitably lost: and can he be ready to attend public worship in due season, the haughty looks and the contemptuous aversion of the Christian manstealers (!) who are assembled, are of equal validity with a formal vote of exclusion from the synagogue. Hence the slave absents himself altogether from a fruitless attendance upon the house of prayer; and thus is banished from the enjoyment of that illumination which is indispensable to the soul's peace, temporal and everlasting. If the Son of Man by his spirit graciously maintains the sense and life of godliness in the slave's heart, every thing connected with him constantly counteracts the very exterior appearance, as well as the internal predominance of religion. The ignorant and profane creatures who are his associates; their bestial mode of life by promiscuous cohabitation; the want of requisite privacy for meditation and prayer; the constant loss of all those means of grace which are necessary and favourable to religious melioration, and the endless disquietude which he must feel, when he endeavours to join a sincere profession of the Christian religion, meekness and philanthropy, with the turbulent despotism and the unmerciful exhibitions of his master, all must either totally eradicate the love of that which is good, or so diminish its influence, that God is robbed of his glory, the Saviour of the affection due to him, religion of its ornament, the church of the services of her members, the world of its salt and light, and the soul of the peace which Christianity was revealed to bestow. Hence, as slavery unavoidably extinguishes all religion in those who are made wretched by its sway over them, the jurisdiction which is claimed and exercised, is an impious usurpation of the divine supremacy. "Slavery is made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty, and murder can invent; and men-stealers are the very worst of thieves. What a universal uproar it would make in this land if but one poor child were kidnapped from his parents! and yet this kidnapping is a regular practice among professing Christians! "These are the people whom the scripture describes as being past feeling. The most knavish tricks are practised by these dealers in human flesh; and if the slaves think of our general character, they must suppose that Christians are Devils, and that Christianity was forged in Hell. These slave purchasers talk of a damaged slave, as of a damaged horse; some want working-slaves, and others breeding-slaves; for the children of slaves are not, according to the law of nature, the property of their parents, but of their owners; and when the planters and their overseers have children by these negroes, instead of regarding the offspring of their vicious passions, they breed up and sell their own children in slavery like others. What a dishonour in us to carry on such an abominable traffic, and to attempt to vindicate or even to palliate it, when every principle belonging to it is founded upon incurable injustice! Shall we call ourselves Christians or Devils? can a race of Devils act against us worse than we do against them? In art and wickedness, as it relates to our principle and practice, we abundantly exceed. The horrid business of slavery in the whole of its establishment is founded on the 66 mammon of unrighteousness," on a selfish love of the world; and the result of this infernal traffic is, a regular system of wholesale licensed thievery and murder. "We blush with holy shame, that men Rowland Hill, All those who devise or execute any iniquitous measures, by which men are impeded from honouring God, and from performing the duties which they owe to him and their own souls, in their moral relation to their Creator, are the most contemptuous rebels against his authority: and if they superadd a claim in competition with the command of Jehovah, they exemplify the audacity of Sa tan, who was hurled to everlasting despair for attempting to dethrone the Sovereign of the Universe. This charge applies to every slaveholder; for services totally incompatible with the devotional exercises of the believer are invariably, at the most unseasonable hours, and during the day of rest, required of these unfortunate victims of that savageness, which, by a most diabolical infatuation, has been combined with Christianity; and which has long exposed the truths of religion to reproach, the sacred cause to ridicule, the solemnities of the house of prayer to contumely, and the very character of a believer to suspicion. While, therefore, a power is usurped and legalized which enables its possessor to defy the law of God and to obstruct the duties of men; and unqualified submission to every arbitrary, unjust, and irreligious mandate cannot be evaded, without the sacrifice of mortal existence; slavery must be the acme of all impiety; consequently, it is impossible that a slaveholder can be a sincere Christian. Slavery is the climax of cruelty. By it every affection of the soul is exterminated. It severs all natural ties, and separates all social relations. Matrimonial engagements, when it commands, are dissolved; the chain which links parents and children, by its touch, is shivered to atoms; and at its approach, every domestic duty dies. Hearts, animated by the most delicate love, indulge their mutual affection, not for a father's and mother's gratulations, but for a tyrant's gain. Brothers and sisters mingle their fraternal sensibilities, not in futurity to bless each other by reciprocal aid, but to increase their unmitigated torments. Seldom do they reside many years in the same habitation; a transfer is necessary; and it is made not according to family or moral connexions, but by the proportionate value in different markets. What are the pungent feelings and exacerbations of the slave in every part of his existence! Doomed from the earliest period of youth to toil, with no necessary relaxation, for the gratification of another's inordinate desires; pinched by hunger, bereft of raiment, denied requisite accommodations at night to repose his enervated and emaciated frame; and for the most trifling inadvertency or the most innocent indulgence, scourged by a cruel and merce. nary taskmaster, until his stripes incapacitate him from active duties; impeded from all religious instruction; tortured with every agonizing anticipation; and terrified by the prospect of pain, labour and bereavement, the miseries of which are diminished by no hope of melioration, he travels the pilgrimage of life, forgetful of God, himself, and eternity; until the lacerations of his heart urge him to the crime, for which, by the sacrifice of his mortal existence, he atones; or, combined with a diseased body, he drags out his temporal probation amid the unfeeling complaints of his kidnapper, that he can no longer force him to fulfil the daily task; the neglect of all around him; and the want of every consolation both internal and external, which might enable him with patience to bear his complicated affliction. Persons called Christians, and officers of the church, buy and sell the stolen coloured people, with little or no regard to their wishes or affections. They are deprived of needful sustenance, are supplied with little and very insufficient raiment, and possess no suitable conveniences for refreshing rest. They are unmercifully, and in general, undeservedly chastised; their health, intellects, religion, morals, peace, and comfort are all disregarded, except the despot's interest would be affected by neglecting them: and this diabolical machination cannot exist without the perpetual exhibition of this malignity by the slave tyrant. Does this degradation include no cruelty? Do these privations result from the pure and undefiled religion which Jesus taught his disciples on the mount? Is this that lucid proof of condescending love to the brethren which your Master demands? Is this the justice that the two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets inculcate? Is this the mercy which the book enjoins us to display to the wretched, the indigent, and the oppressed? And can that man, whose heart with perennial uniformity evinces the predominance of those principles that produce such consequences, momentarily believe, upon scriptural authority, that he is transformed into the similitude of HIM who was meek and lowly in heart or can he unfeignedly affirm, I know that I am passed from death unto life, because I love the brethren? For this thing which it cannot bear, the earth is disquieted. The Gospel of peace and mercy preached by him who steals, buys, and sells the purchase of Messiah's blood! Rulers of the church making merchandise of their brethren's souls!—and Christians trading the persons of men!-Lovers of their own selves: covetous, proud, fierce; men of corrupt minds, who resist the truth; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof-from such turn away. 2 Timothy 3. 2, 5. The slaveholder's claim is founded on falsehood. So completely have the varied vicious dispositions which attend man-stealing blinded the eyes and indurated the hearts of flesh-merchants, that they converse respecting slaves as their property, with as much gravity as if they were honestly acquired, and as if no law had been violated. This infatuation has infected not the open reprobate only, who neither fears God nor regards man, but the professed believer in Christianity, thereby demonstrating the evil nature, the hardening, blinding tendency, and the consummate deceitfulness of sin. He who steals his brethren, and sells them, and makes merchandise of them, pleads, that the victim of wrong is legalized property; that the slave is equally a transferable possession with any other acquisition; that he is chargeable with no crime for having invested some of his money in souls and hands; that all the progeny of the creatures whom he originally purchased, of right belong to him; and that he violates no rule of equity, no moral principle, and no Christian affection, by accumulating wealth through this medium. On the contrary, we asseverate; that no rational being, by any transmutation possible, can ever become property; that no terrestrial legislators, without the most diabolical impiety, can legalize this claim upon the human family; that to traffic in flesh and blood animated by the reasoning capacities is the greatest practical indignity which can be offered to men as immortals; that he purchased an article, which he knew at the time of the pretended transfer was stolen; that every coloured child born in his house, which he claims and holds as his property, is shamelessly kidnapped; and that every principle of justice, decency, |