of protection; therefore love and protect our little families," -no vain appeal to a heart so noble as that of Oglethorpe. His fame spread among the natives of the forest. They came from far off and near at his call to hear words of peace, and accept his powerful protection. “We are come," said the chief of Coweta, "twenty-five days' journey to see you. I was never willing to go down to Charleston, lest I should die on the way; but when I heard you were come, and that you are good men, I came down that I might hear good things." -"Call back," said Oglethorpe, "your kindred who loved you; recall the Yamassees, that they may be buried in peace among their ancestors, and may see their graves before they die." How beautiful the promptings of true Christianity! No wonder the Creeks and Cherokees, and distant nations, numerous and powerful, sought and received his kindly intervention to settle their tribal feuds, and protect them from the cruel aggressions of the white "The good faith of Oglethorpe in the offers of peace, his noble mien, and sweetness of temper, conciliated the confidence of the red men; and he in his turn was pleased with their simplicity, and sought for means to clear the glimmering ray of their minds, to guide their bewildered reason, and teach them to know the God whom they ignorantly adored."*

man.

Well may the "persecuted Protestants" come hither from Salzburg with their "Bibles, hymn-books, catechisms, and books of devotion," beginning their "pilgrimage cheerfully in the name of God;" "after a discourse and prayer and benediction," conversing as they go, on the banks of the Rhine, amid "hymns and prayers, of justification and of sanctification, and of standing fast in the Lord." How divinely upborne were they amid the perils of a terrific storm at sea as they raised their voices in prayer and song amidst the tempest, "and feared no evil"! How delightful to see these "wayfaring men" met at Charleston by the paternal

*Bancroft, ii. 423, et seq.

Oglethorpe, and conducted to the site of their own town! They named it "Ebenezer:" and here they would sojourn only for a time; for their "home was beyond the skies."

"The grand success of Oglethorpe made the colony increase rapidly by volunteer emigrants. His undertaking will succeed,' said Johnson, the Governor of South Carolina; 'for he nobly devotes all his powers to serve the poor, and rescue them from their wretchedness.' 'He bears a great love to the servants and children of God,' wrote the pastor of Ebenezer. He has taken care of us to the utmost of his ability. God has so blessed his presence and his regulations in the land, that others would not accomplish in many years what he has brought about in one." *

"Taking with him Tomo-chichi and others of the Creeks," he returned to England in the interests of his colony. Feb. 6, 1736, he came back with three hundred emigrants, among whom was the afterwards distinguished John Wesley, glowing with missionary zeal, but as yet without evidence of the new life within. Charles Wesley, thereafter to be one of the greatest of lyric poets, was the governor's secretary. The pious Moravians were here, and mark the presence of Christian faith in this new accession to the population of Georgia. They landed, and ascended a rising ground not far from Tybee Island, "where," said Wesley, "they all knelt, and returned thanks to God for having safely arrived in Georgia."

We have proceeded far enough to find in this province the ample and active presence of divine power, which we have identified thus far everywhere in the formation of these States; and we should confidently expect to find this agency developing and organizing here the elements of a free government.

The laws were few, and exceedingly simple. The trustees governed the colony in the absence of the governor. But the civil rights of the people depended chiefly upon the humane influence of Oglethorpe and his high sense of jus

* Bancroft, iii. 425.

tice. When he was absent, the people mourned, and thought the laws of the trustees too stringent. Under control of the highest motives, and hoping to prevent a monopoly of lands, they had unwisely ordained that the right of soil should descend only to males. Far in advance of their times, they enacted a stringent prohibitory liquor-law, which, high as it was in its just morality, could not be enforced. They also took a firm stand against slavery, which secures them an elevated place in history, and speaks decisively for the effective power of Christianity in the judgments and life of Oglethorpe. "No settlement was ever before established on so humane a plan." In London, in 1734, it could be truthfully said in praise of Georgia, "Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions." "The name of slavery is here unheard, and every inhabitant is free from unchosen masters and oppression." "Slavery," said Oglethorpe, "is against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime." Brave words of a noble man! Happy had it been for the great State of Georgia if they had been heeded. But we must take mournful note of the fact that the influence of those who were termed "the better sort of people in Savannah" finally prevailed; and against her own principles, against the highsouled will of her noble founder, against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England, this "horrid crime" was committed; and, in other years, Georgia would, so far as possible, expiate her crime by the blood of her best citizens.

REVIEW.

Thus have we passed over the original colonies of the Southern group. Later, Florida and the Gulf States would

be added to their number, and four in the Central West receive the blighting curse; and fifteen great States, otherwise free, become the slaveholding confederated South.

The institution extended itself, by sufferance, speedily through several of the Middle and Eastern States, but yielded, not so much, we fear, to the force of principle as to the resistance of the climate, too cold for the negro, and returning much higher profits from the labor of free white people.

Here, again, our urgent question returns: If God intended this vast and splendid country for the occupancy of freedom, and for the development of a powerful homogeneous people, why did he suffer the intrusion of this antagonist institution? Why must the grand natural development of liberty be obstructed, and in so many ways defeated, by an antagonism so direct, and armed by the fearful power of human selfishness?

There is, as we understand, but one answer to these interrogations. Man is free: and, in a state of trial, the power to do right must involve the power to do wrong; the appreciation and concession of personal rights upon the principles of common brotherhood and humanity must imply the power to withhold those rights upon principles of selfishness and oppression. The disposition to justice and benevolence must depend upon the extent to which the great social law of Jesus Christ, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," has taken possession of the soul, and controlled its perverted self-love. The social wrongs of the world are in direct opposition to the divine law of morality expressed in another form, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The rights of man will be universally conceded and fully honored, when by the new creation, and the advancement of civilization, this law of love is universally obeyed. Because it is not, and perverted self-love rises above this great law of right, slavery is possible; and, since

God did not forcibly interfere with human liberty, the bitter wrongs of slavery fell upon our Southern States.

But God does frequently, by special interference, interrupt and control the wrong tendencies of men. When such restraint becomes a higher necessity than the indulgence of abused freedom, then the abuse comes to an end, affording another illustration of the revealed fact, "He maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder he doth restrain."

But there is in the toleration of slavery a still higher manifestation of the divine purpose. He proposes no mechanical coerced freedom in this Great Republic, no feeble, ephemeral growth of liberty, such as might be the result of arbitrary protection and untried strength, but a sturdy, masterly power, such as can only be the result of discipline, of vigorous exercise and severe habit. What, then, could be a higher manifestation of Divine Wisdom than to allow this intense form of despotism to rise up in the very midst of free institutions? If it must exist anywhere upon the globe, it would seem well to import it even, to gather its scattered elements from every part of the world, and condense them into their most dreaded and terrific forms, within the broad domain consecrated to freedom. Then let oppression do its worst. Let it spread like leprosy upon the body politic, and see whether or not it has power to destroy the life of the nation. Bring up to the contest the truest, purest form of social right known among men, and see whether it can grapple, first with the moral, and then with the physical force of tyranny. Let the dreaded conflict have a wide field and an ample range of time; endow the vile usurpation with all the power of wealth and social distinction, with political skill and the highest culture; and let it demonstrate its most subtle and most daring force, that the world may see whether civil and social wrong has any limits, or whether it has power to subjugate, and stamp into the earth, the liberties of the race.