circumstances may arise which will make it supremely necessary for the child to refuse compliance with his parents' commands? that he cannot obey his Father in heaven without disobeying his father on earth? And shall our personal habits and family ties both be sundered in obedience to the will of God, and we still be compelled to assist in enforcing a statute of society, which is far more at enmity with the law of God, and injurious to His cause, than any private practice can possibly be? If we must refuse to obey ourselves or our parents when ordered into sin, much more must we refuse obedience to the more sinful and more dangerous demands of government.

2. But there is an additional duty imposed upon us. We must not only refuse to assist in the execution of an unrightcous law, we are required of God to refuse to desist from those duties whose performance this law has forbidden.

Many may have moral courage enough to refuse to do a wicked act, and not have sufficient to nerve them to do a righteous one in opposition to the ungodly decrec. Many a follower of Christ has shrunk from a defense of His cause, when they would have equally shrunk from a denial of Him. Yet there are claims which our Maker has upon us, compliance with which is essential to our growth in grace, and even to the possession of His favor. "He that is not for Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad." Were it not so, the principles of the Gospel never could spread through the world. Sin has gained possession of the hearts and the heads of men. It has organized governments, and established itself in the high places of influence and authority. It would be careless respecting passive resistance to its demands, save when prompted by its instinctive hatred of goodness to pour upon the servant of God the fury of its malice. It is only by doing what is impiously forbidden that the soul gains the approval of God and extends His dominions.

The history of Christianity affords innumerable examples of this obligation. From the career of Christ to that of His latest disciple who has thus followed his Master, come to us lessons of instruction and encouragement. Those who passed through great tribulation, who fought the good fight, who opposed the world, the flesh, and the devil, and are now surrounding the throne of God, esteem it their chief honor that they trod the path of Duty, though human customs, opinion, edicts, and power combined to keep them motionless, or to force them upon the broad and crowded road of popular, legal, governmental sin.

3. There is still another duty, coextensive with the law which it opposes.

We are required to cast our influence against it, and to endeavor to create a public sentiment which shall nullify its action and obtain its repeal.

There may be some unholy edicts which the majority of the subjects of government can oppose only in this way. But even this many shrink from doing. Feeling but little their responsibility for immoral laws, they allow them to be enacted and executed without their opposition, in deed or word. In this they act contrary to the practice and commands of Christ. He was bold to reprove all wrong institutions and edicts. He faithfully shed the light which He brought into the world upon all the habitations of cruelty. If we would receive His approval, we must pour the light of truth upon the nefarious laws and practices that yet curse mankind. In this way all can serve their God and create a moral power that shall sweep all these solidified and imperious iniquities from the world. These fires kindled in solitary breasts, spreading through their nearer circles of family, church, and community, shall meet and enkindle other like fires in other hearts, and other localities, until the mighty flame shall blaze over all the land, and consume the evil that had long enjoyed supreme possession.

When, then, we are convinced of the immorality of a law, if we would render to God the things that are God's, we are oath-bound of conscience to refuse compliance with its demands for coöperation, to disobey its commands to desist from the right which it opposes, and to throw our influence against it, so as to destroy its energy and compel its repeal.

III. Let us apply these fundamental principles to the subject which is so fearfully agitating the nation.

The law for the rendition of fugitives comes to us clothed in the majesty of that authority which we all feel bound to respect, and, if possible, to obey. Yet its form and features, despite this stateliness, are repugnant to our feelings and judgment. Cæsar, though in set array and claiming sovereign honors, is demanding clearly not the things which are his own, but the things which are God's. The question of obligation is therefore brought home to our hearts. It is no theory merely that we have been discussing, no scholastic bout of words, but a present and pressing duty. We may feel at a loss how to proceed. We may fancy our sympathy for the slave is an impulse of benevolence which cooler decisions of the reason should restrain, while the duty of sustaining the authority of law is confirmed by every consideration of benevolence and justice, human and divine.

Amid this contest of principles, when the pulpit and press are urging the decree of State as of superior claim to the decree of Conscience, when we are told obedience to Cæsar fulminating his edicts against God is a greater duty than obedience to God Himself, uttering his decrees in every heart against this law of Cæsar, in such a moment of widespread and increasing conflict, we must reëxamine the charts divinely granted us, to see if we can track the course marked out by the King of kings, the Cæsar of Cæsars, which alone will lead us to the desired haven.

The ground of our opposition to all laws that protect

slavery is the feeling against slavery itself.

We may profess to give political or other reasons for this feeling, but we fail to see, or to acknowledge, the true reason by any such pretenses. It is an abhorrence to the claim of Property in Man that is the inspiration and the vitality of the passion that now belts the North with a burning zone. Is this conviction based on immutable foundations in the moral nature? or is it a transient emotion, the offspring of a perverted fancy? or is it a fanatical indulgence of a rightful emotion which we should curb within its appropriate limits? There are many who advocate the last opinion, whose influence greatly retards the progress of the truth. How deep this cause is seated may be learned from considering the nature of the crime which it is opposing.

Slavery is the most extreme and terrible violation of human rights. Appeal to your moral instincts. Do they not revolt from a state of servitude? Would you yield up your liberty of thought, of speech, of act, and become the possession, body and soul, of another? History shows the supreme vitality and energy of this feeling.

All other

passions and purposes of men are weak in comparison with this innermost nature. It is read in the insurrections which disturb the serenity of tyrants, in the revolutions that have wrought such mighty changes in society, in the haughty bearing of the savage, in the elastic step of the freeman. It impels every colony to proclaim its independence from its parent State when its strength is sufficient to sustain its desires. It is the soul of eloquence, of poetry, of art, of patriotism. It feeds the sacred fires of religion. Right over myself, a right given by God, and only to be annulled by Him, or for reasons which He approves, - this is the first law of our individual being.

But it is cruelly said, these emotions are not common to the enslaved people of America. They are beneath this universal sentiment of humanity, because they are beneath

the grade of man. See how those who have known nothing of freedom save by the undying promptings of their nature are making efforts to obtain it, by as great courage and sufferings as have made illustrious the annals of the world.

"Their pulses beat with floods of living fire."

They hide themselves in the perilous holds of tiny coasters; they put on disguises and thread fearfully the paths of travel. A lady, soft and delicate, wears, like Imogen, the garb of men, and employs as a servant her darker-favored husband, both slaves now, both unspeakably despised because slaves and of African blood, but both to be held in honor abroad and at home, and to become noted persons in the history of their times.* One has himself nailed in a box, and in this coffin-like carriage is rudely tossed hither and thither, as freight, after the rough mode of public carriers, who, had they dreamed they were handling a living man, and he a black slave, would have torn off the cover, not to relieve, deliver, and hail such unexampled endurance, but to reject him with loathing, as of a race that neither deserves nor desires its liberty, and to hurl him hotly back into the hell from which they were unwittingly bearing him.

Thus does the nature of man break through every crust, however thick, of oppression and degradation, and assert its supreme prerogative. Thus does its immutable decree declare the wrongfulness of that iniquity which most positively prevents its rightful exercise.

Not only do our instincts thus condemn slavery, but our conscience approves their decision. Whatever palliatives may be thrown around it, whatever texts of Scripture may be wrested most wickedly to its support, whatever glamour Church and Society may seek to throw around its horrid nature, it can never seduce the Conscience to its service.

* William and Ellen Crafts. He has been employed in the Foreign Service of the British Government.