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Show 102 its full power on the slave. Will it not be taught to make him obedient to his master, rather than to raise him to the dignity of a man? Is slave•·y, which tends so proverbially to debase the mind, the preparation for spiritual truth? Can the slave comprehend the principle of Love, the essential principle of Christianity, when he hears it from the lips of those whose relations to him express injustice and selfishness? But suppose him to receive Christianity in its purity, and to feel all its power. Is this to reconcile us to slavery ? Is a being, who can understand the sublimest truth which has ever entered the human mind, who can love and adore God, who can conform himself to the celestial virtue of the Saviour, for whom that Saviour died, to whom heaven is opened, whose repentance now gives joy in heaven, - is such a being to Le held as property, driven by force as the brute, and denied the rights of man by a fellow-creature, by a professed disciple of the just and merciful Saviour? Has he a religious nature, and dares any one hold him as a slave ? I have now completed my views of the evils of slavery, and have shown how little they are mitigated by what are thought its ad vantages. In this whole discussion I have cautiously avoided quoting particular examples of its baneful influences. I 103 have not brought together accounts of horriLle cruelty which come to us from the South. I have confined myself to the natural tendencies of slavery, to evils bound up in its very nature, which, as long as man is man, cannot be separated from it. That these evils are unmixed or universal, I do not say. There are and must be exceptions to them, and moro or less of good may often be found in connexion with them. No institution, be it what it may, can make the life of a human being wholly evil, m· cut off every means of improvement. God's benevolence triumphs over all the perverseness and folly of man's devices. He sends a cheering beam into the darkest abode. The slave has his hours of exhilaration. His hut occasionally rings with thoughtl ess mirth. Among this class, too, there are and must be, occasionally, higher pleasures. God is no respecter of persons ; and in some slaves there is a lwppy nature which no condition can destroy, just as among children we find some whom the worst educat;on cannot spoil. The African is so affectionate, imitative, and docile, that in favorable circumstances he catches much that is good; and accordingly the influence of a wise and kind master will be seen in the very countenance and bearing of his slaves. Among this degraded people, there are, occasionally, examples of superior intelligence and virtue, showing the groundlessness of the |