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Show 88 THE MONTHLY OFFERING. would rather strike off their chains, lay aside every weight that encumbers them, remove every impediment from their path, land them an helping hand, if they ueed it, raise them up when they fall, and in every way encourage them to run the race, which is set before them, as well as us, and to stretch forward that thev may attain, if they can, nearer than ourselves to the. mai·k of our high calling-the stature of perfect men. Dr. Chant.dng's New Work. We r~joice to give the readers of the Offering a few detached passages from Dr. Channing's new work. 1t is the best that he has yet written on the subject of Slavery and Freedotl\; and we hope it will be widely circulated. "It is important, that we should each of us bear our conscientious testimony against slavery, not only to swell that tide of public opinion, which is to sweep it away, but that we may save ourselves from sinking into silent, unsuspecting acquiescence in the e9il. A constant resistance is needed to this downward tendency, as is proved by the tone of feeling in the free States. \Vhat is more common among ourseh·es, than a courteous, apologetic disapprobation of sla,·ery, which differs little from taking its part. This is one of its worst influences. It taints the whole country. The existence, the perpetual presence of a gr~at, prosperous, unrestrained system of wrong in a commumty, is one of the sorest trials to the moral sense of the people, and needs to be earnestly withstood. The idea of justice becomes unconsciously obscured in our minds. Our hearts become more or less seared to wrong. The South says, that slavery is nothing to us at the North. But through our trade, we are brought into constant contact with 1t; we grow familiar with it; still more, we thrive by it; and the next step is easy, to consent to the sacr ifice of human be· ings, by whom we prosper. The dead know not tbetr EXTRACTS FaOM DR. ClJANNJNG. 89 want 9f life, and sa a people, whose moral sentiments are palsied by the interweaving of all their interests with a sys!em of oppression, become degraded without suspecting it. Iu consequence of this connection with slave countries, the Idea of Human Rights, that great idea, of our age, and on which we profess to build our institutions, is darkened, weakened among us, so as to be to many little more than a sound. A country of licensed, legalized wrongs, is not the atmosphere in which the sentiment of reverence for these rights can exist in full power. In such a community, there may be a respect for the arbitary rights, which law creates, and may destroy, and a respect for historical rights, which rest on usage. But the fundamental rights which inhere in man as 1)1an, and which lie at the foundation of a just, equ itable, beneficent, npble polity, must be imper~ ectly comprehended. This depression of moral sentiment 1n a people, is an evil, the extent of which is not easily ap· prehended. It affects and degrades every relation of life. Men, in whose sight human nature is stripped of all its rights and dignity, cannot love or hono): any who possef\S it, as they ought. In offering these remarks, I do not foJ,get what I rejoice to kno\\·, that there is much moral feeling among us in regard to slavery. But still there is a strong tendency to indifference, and to something worse ; and on this account we owe it to our own moral health, and to the moral life of society, to express plainly and strongly our moral abhorrence of this institution." " There is one portion of the community, to which I would especially commend the cause of thP. enslaved, and the duty of open testimony against this form of oppression; and that is, our women." "I know it will be said, that in thus doing. woman will wander beyond her sphere, and forsake her ·proper work. What.! Do I hear such language in a civilized age, and in a land of Christians. \Vhat, let me ask, is woman's work1 It .Is to be a minister of Christian love. It i• to sympathize Wtth human misery. It is to keep alive in society some feehng of human urotherhood. This is her mission on |