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Show 54 nity of a man? The answer is most cheering. The great Emancipator has been Christianity. Policy, interest, state-craft, church-craft, the low motives which have originated other revolutions, have not worked here. From the times of Clarkson and Wilberforce, down to the present day, the friends of the slave, who have pleaded his cause and broken his chains, have been Christians ; and it is from Christ the divine philanthropist, from the inspiration of his cross, that they have gathered faith, hope, and love for the conflict. This illustration of the spirit and power of Christianity, is a bright addition to the evidences of its truth. We have here the miracle of a great nation, rising in its strength, not for conquest, not to assert its own rights, but to free and elevate the most despised and injured race on earth ; and as this stands alone in human history, so it recals to us those wonderful works of mercy and power, by which the divinity of our religion was at first confirmed. It is with deep sorrow, that I am compelled to turn to the contrast between religion in England and religion in America. There it vindicates the cause of the oppressed. Here it rivets the chain and hardens the heart of the oppressor. At the South, what is the Christian ministry doing for the slave? Teaching the rightfulness of his yoke, joining in the cry against the men who plead for his freedom, giving the sanction of God's name to the 55 greatest offence against his children. This is the sadrlest view, presented by the conflict with slavery. The very men, whose office it is to plead against all wrong, to enforce the obligation of impartial, inflexible justice, to breathe the spirit of universal brotherly love, to resist at all hazards the spirit and evil customs of the world, to live and to die under the banner of Christian truth, have enlisted under the standard of slavery. Had they merely declined to bring the subject into the Church, on the ground of the presence of the slave, they would have been justifier!. Had they declined to discuss it through the press and in conversation, on the ground that the public mind was too furious to bear the truth, they would have been approved by multitudes; though it is wisest for the minister to resign his office, when it can only be exercised under menace and unrighteous restraint, and to go where with unsealed lips he may teach and enforce human duty in its full extent. But the ministers at the South have not been content with silence. The majority of them are understood to have given their support to slavery, to have thrown theit· weight into the scale of the master. That in so doing, they have belied their clear convictions, that they have preached known falsehood, we do not say. Few ministers ~f Christ, we trust, can teach what their deliberate judgments condemn. But in cases like the present, how |