"WE ARE VERILY GUILTY CONCERNING OUR BROTHER."

Genesis xlii. 21.

E shall not dwell especially to-day on the crime that still possesses our land, after the usual manner of its consideration. Let us turn from the dreadful fruit as it ripens in that heavy Southern air, and examine its seed-grain that is growing profusely in every heart. The corner-stone of this system is prejudice against color. Upon this almost universal feeling the slaveholder builds an impregnable fortress. Slavery will never be abolished until it gives way. As one that must render an account to God for what I say, I shall speak. As those that must give like account before the same God, I beseech you, take heed how you hear. Though I assail a deep-rooted but God-forbidden sentiment, as you would obey the command of Christ, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," I

* A sermon preached on the occasion of the State Fast, at Wilbraham, Mass., in 1854, and at Roxbury, Mass., in 1858. It was also delivered at the Forsyth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, New York.

entreat you to give the subject your candid and Christian attention.

I. Upon what is slavery grounded? Is it upon the right to hold in slavery the black man, or the man who has any blood relation, however remote, with that portion of the sons of men? The most arrogant defender of slavery in this country has never dared to advocate the enslavement of any race of colored men, for all men are colored. The lighter, though sometimes very dusky, shades of the Caucasian, the yellow Chinese, the tawny Malay, the copper-hued Indian, are all painted by the hand of their Creator another color than white. No doctor of diabolic divinity has ever picked from the sacred page any text for the enslavement of Indian, Mexican, Englishman, or Greek, though every argument which they wrest from the writings of Paul (as did those of old for their own destruction and the destruction of the brethren of Christ) must, on their principle, be applied chiefly to white persons, as these were almost the only slaves of Rome in the days of Paul. One text alone, in the whole Bible, can they bring to the support of African slavery. Every other reference to it is human, not specific the slavery of Man, not Ham. And even that text supports no such theory. It was a prophecy announced and completed four thousand years ago, when Joshua made the Gideonites his servants, and David ruled over the whole land of Canaan.* A broader view of the history of these three families only confirms this position. The sons of Canaan ruled in Nineveh, and were the first conquerors of the world. They became subject to the posterity of Shem, under Cyrus, and Shem had to allow Japhet, under Alexander, to abide in his tents. To-day, Shem, in the person of the Turk, holds Canaan in bondage in Syria and Egypt, and Japhet, in that of Russia and England, dwells in many of the tents of Shem.

Scripture is stolen to deck a false idol. It is a new argu

*See Note V.

ment for an old sin, an argument without any antitype in history, or any authority in the Word of God. Abraham, they say, was a slaveholder; but the sons of Shem were his slaves. Egyptians and Babylonians enslaved Hebrews, Hebrews enslaved the Canaanites, not for reasons of race, but for the sole reason of power. The Persian owned the Greek; the Greek, the Roman; the Roman, the Norman ; the Norman, the Saxon. No one of them regarded color, but condition only. The last of these slaves, the Saxon, having gained his liberty, and following the devil's maxim, "Do to others as you do not wish should be done to you," goes out and binds his fellow-servants. He is an adventurer, and when he conquers, enslaves. He steals men and women from Africa, and sells them in America. Here he enslaves every new-born child of the daughters of these captives in every following generation. For two hundred years he pursues this traffic, and when the conscience of the world begins to rise up against his iniquity, behold, he clothes himself with these fig leaves of prophecy, which he gets professed ministers of Christ to sew together, and hopes to perpetuate his sin and shame with a pretension that blasphemes God and empties His Word of its sovereign power. For if that Word could be proved to indorse this crime, its sanctity and authority flee instantly and forever.

No other modern race but the Saxon makes this pretension. Spanish, French, Russ, Turk, all but the English, claim no Scripture text for their protection. Nor can all

the last people be charged with this folly. It is the child of the American Saxon, not of the British. It was born on our soil, of our lusts, of which it is the meanest offspring. Away with all such mockery of God and his Gospel. Stand forth, transgressor, in thy own vileness. "Lie down in thy shame, and let thy sins cover thee." Pretend not to shelter thyself in the Word of God. intolerable flame against all such hypocrisy.

It burns with

No one ever

before made such a cowardly excuse for his indulgence in avarice, power, and lust. No sinner in all the Bible ever arrayed his wicked passions in such a cloak of holiness. It was left for preachers and professors of the Gospel in this free and Christian America, in this nineteenth century after the coming of Christ, to weave such a garment of sanctity for the body of their death. How will He whom they thus mock, put them to open shame for this profanity of His name and claims. Better defy Him in word, as they do in act, than to thus proclaim that in their most godless deeds they are especially observing His most godly law.

Thus was it left for Satan, in his last resort, to transform himself into an angel of light, and enter this Paradise, which the Bible and Christian institutions were making the garden of the Lord, and by the deft handling of the Word of God, seduce His Church to her ruin. As he showed his skill in selecting apt texts of Scripture with which to assail our Lord and Savior, so has he tempted His disciples-alas! in their case, with a too baleful success.

II. But another root this iniquity puts forth. It is claimed that this mark of color is a badge of separation and of degradation; that, because they are black, they are without equal rights, and cannot mingle indissolubly with the rest of mankind. Their white neighbors shrink from them with horror. A leper is not so offensive.

This sin of caste prevails here as much as where it has borne its legitimate fruit the transforming of this separated, darker, and inferior class into the property of the lighter and superior.

To its consideration we of the North are especially called. It is a sin at our own doors, in our own hearts. It makes us naked before our enemies. It ties our tongues before their taunts. It must be extirpated ere God gives us perfect and perpetual peace. It is the most general, deep

rooted, unnatural, and destructive of all the sins of the nation.

1. Its universality none can doubt. The familiarity of the South, the philanthropy of the North, have not yet weakened this feeling. Now and then a Richard M. Johnson publicly avows his tinged companion to be his wife. Here and there, in the North, equally fervent loves are legally consummated. But these are solitary stars in the midnight clouds of this superstition. "Darkness is over all the land."

2. It is the most deep-rooted. I could not have mentioned a subject that would have excited such instant and profound loathing as this. I rejoice that you have so patiently listened to its uncongenial truths. I believe that it is because reason commands you, though your feelings yet refuse obedience. Let reason have her perfect work, and see if she cannot subdue this feeling to herself, and convert it to the perfect truth.

The presence of a drop of this blood excludes its possessor from all white society, North or South. But a few years since, a wealthy man in New Orleans, in a heated conversation, was charged with having a colored ancestor, a free black, some four or five generations before. The blood of his antagonist was not sufficient recompense for the injury he suffered. He prosecuted him, and laid his damages at twenty thousand dollars. Though the defendant could not prove his charge, he proved enough to throw a stain of doubt on his opponent, which is said to have excluded him from the society where he had moved. have excluded him from any circle in the North. man in a New England town brought an elegant and wealthy bride from the West Indies, who was slightly tinged with this huc. Her wealth, culture, and beauty could not secure for her admittance into a society below that in which she had moved at home, and she remained in seclusion till death admitted her to the equal company of heaven. These instances could be reproduced everywhere. It is not the amount, it is the fact, of African blood that puts its in

It would A gentle