“If, then, we oppress the stranger, as I have shown, and if, by a knowledge of his heart, we find that he is a person of the same passions and feelings as ourselves, we are certainly breaking, by means of the prosecution of the Slave Trade, that fundamental principle of Christianity, which says, that we shall not do that unto another which we wish should not be done unto ourselves, and, I fear, cutting ourselves off from all expectation of the Divine blessing.  For how inconsistent is our conduct!  We come into the temple of God; we fall prostrate before Him; we pray to Him, that He will have mercy upon us.  But how shall He have mercy upon us, who have had no mercy upon others!  We pray to Him, again, that He will deliver us from evil.  But how shall He deliver us from evil, who are daily invading the rights of the injured African, and heaping misery on his head!”

I attempted, lastly, to show, that, though the sin of the Slave Trade had been hitherto a sin of ignorance, and might, therefore, have so far been winked at, yet as the crimes and miseries belonging to it became known, it would attach even to those who had no concern in it, if they suffered it to continue either without notice or reproach, or if they did not exert themselves in a reasonable manner for its suppression.  I noticed particularly, the case of Tyre and Sidon, which were the Bristol and the Liverpool of those times.  A direct judgment had been pronounced by the prophet Joel against these cities, and, what is remarkable, for the prosecution of this same barbarous traffic.  Thus, “And what have ye to do with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?  Ye have cast lots for my people.  Ye have sold a girl for wine.  The children of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their own border.  Behold!  I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will recompense your wickedness on your own heads.”  Such was the language of the prophet; and Tyre and Sidon fell, as he had pointed out, when the inhabitants were either cut off, or carried into slavery.

Having thrown out these ideas to the notice of the audience, I concluded in the following words:—­

“If, then, we wish to avert the heavy national judgment which is hanging over our heads, (for must we not believe that our crimes towards the innocent Africans lie recorded against us in heaven?) let us endeavour to assert their cause.  Let us nobly withstand the torrent of the evil, however inveterately it may be fixed among the customs of the times; not, however, using our liberty as a cloak of maliciousness against those, who, perhaps, without due consideration, have the misfortune to be concerned in it, but upon proper motives, and in a proper spirit, as the servants of God; so that if the sun should be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and the very heaven should fall upon us, we may fall in the general convulsion without dismay, conscious that we have done our duty in endeavouring to succour the distressed, and that the stain of the blood of Africa is not upon us.”