than a free and Christian assembly, the enforcement of this truth might be pertinent.  Neither do I intend to analyze the horrors of slavery for your inspection, nor to freeze your blood with authentic recitals of savage cruelty.  Nor will time allow me to explore even a furlong of that immense wilderness of suffering which remains unsubdued in our land.  I take it for granted that the existence of these evils is acknowledged, if not rightly understood.  My object is to define and enforce our duty, as Christians and philanthropists.”

This was, by way of exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address.  Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme, viz., the duty of abolishing it.  To this end he laid down four propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon on the heights overlooking and commanding his enemies’ works.  The first, broadly stated, asserted the kinship of the slave to the free population of the republic.  They were men; they were natives of the country; they were in dire need.  They were ignorant, degraded, morally and socially.  They were the heathen at home, whose claims far outranked those in foreign lands; they were higher than those of the “Turks or Chinese, for they have the privileges of instruction; higher than the Pagans, for they are not dwellers in a Gospel land; higher than our red men of the forest, for we do not bind them with gyves, nor treat them as chattels.”

Then he turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming:  “What has Christianity done by direct effort for our slave population?  Comparatively nothing.  She has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of commiseration; but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze without emotion on a multitude of miserable beings at home, large enough to constitute a nation of freemen, whom tyranny has heathenized by law.  In her public services they are seldom remembered, and in her private donations they are forgotten.  From one end of the country to the other her charitable societies form golden links of benevolence, and scatter their contributions like rain drops over a parched heath; but they bring no sustenance to the perishing slave.  The blood of souls is upon her garments, yet she heeds not the stain.  The clanking of the prisoner’s chains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate her heart.”

Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus: 

“Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence is produced, with a sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country, and to challenge the admiration of the world.  But what a pitiful detail of grievances does this document present, in comparison with the wrongs which our slaves endure?  In the one case it is hardly the plucking of a hair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing of a live body on the wheel—­the stings of the wasp contrasted with the tortures of the Inquisition.  Before God I must say that such a glaring contradiction