OCR Text |
Show Hl LIBERTY A•ND SLA ,.EHY. such malignant bitterness and gall. This simple thought, perhaps, might save us many a pitiless pelting of philanthropy. But here lies the difl'ereuce-here lies our peculiar siu aud shame. This gt·eat, primordial right is, with us, denied by law. The slave shall not be tftught to read. Oh! that he might be taught! What floods of sympathy, what thuudcrings and lightnings of philanthropy, would then be spared the world! But why, we ask, should the slave be taught to read? That he might read tl10 Bible, and feecl on the food of eternal life, is the reply ; and the reply is good. Ah! if the slave would only read his Bible, nnd drink its very spirit in, we should rejoice at the change; for he would then be a better and a happier man. He would then know his duty, and the high gr·onnd ou which his duty rests. He woultl then see, in the words of Dr. Waylaucl, that "T!te duty of slaves is explicitly made lcnown in the Bible. They are bound to obedience, fidelity, submission, and respect to their masters-not only to the good and kind, but also to the unkind and froward; not, however ·, on the ground of duty to m~n, but on the gro~tna of duty to God." But, with all, we AHOUME~TS OF ABOLIT IO~I ST.S . 125 have some little glimpse of our dangers, as well as some little sense of om· duties. The tempter is not asleep. His eye is still, as ever of old, fixed on the for·bidden tr·ec · and thither he will point his haplcsa victims: Like certain senators, and demagogues, and doctors of divinity, he vill preach from the Declaration of Independenc tlrer than fwm the Bible. He will teach, not that submissi~ n, but that resistance, is a duty. To every ev1! passion his inflammatory and murder-instigating appeals will be made. Stung by these appeals and maddened, tbe poor African, it is to be feared, would have no better notions of equality and freedom, and no better views of duty to God or man, than his teachers themselves have. Such, then, being the state of things, ask us not to prepare the s]a,-e for his own utter undoing. Ask ns not- 0 most kind and benevolent Christian teacher !-ask us not to lay the train beneath our feet, that you may no longer hold the blazing torch in vain! Let that torch be extinguished. Let all incendiary publications be destroyed. Let no conspiracies, no insurrections and no murderr: be instigated. Let th,e, . pur~ precepts of U1e |