what unspeakable delight I should have had in having you among the number; you may all judge of my feeling for these past years, when while preaching from Sabbath to Sabbath to congregations, I have not been so fortunate as even to see father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, or cousin in my congregations.  While visiting the sick, going to the house of mourning, and burying the dead, I have been a constant mourner for you.  My sorrow has been that I know you are not in possession of those hallowed means of grace.  I am thankful to you for those mild and gentle traits of character which you took such care to enforce upon me in my youthful days.  As an evidence that I prize both you and them, I may say that at the age of thirty-seven, I find them as valuable as any lessons I have learned, nor am I ashamed to let it be known to the world, that I am the son of a bond man and a bond woman.

Let me urge upon you the fundamental truths of the Gospel of the Son of God.  Let repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ have their perfect work in you, I beseech you.  Do not be prejudiced against the gospel because it may be seemingly twisted into a support of slavery.  The gospel rightly understood, taught, received, felt and practised, is anti-slavery as it is anti-sin.  Just so far and so fast as the true spirit of the gospel obtains in the land, and especially in the lives of the oppressed, will the spirit of slavery sicken and become powerless like the serpent with his head pressed beneath the fresh leaves of the prickly ash of the forest.

  There is not a solitary decree of the immaculate God that has been
  concerned in the ordination of slavery, nor does any possible
  development of his holy will sanctify it.

He has permitted us to be enslaved according to the invention of wicked men, instigated by the devil, with intention to bring good out of the evil, but He does not, He cannot approve of it.  He has no need to approve of it, even on account of the good which He will bring out of it, for He could have brought about that very good in some other way.

God is never straitened; He is never at a loss for means to work.  Could He not have made this a great and wealthy nation without making its riches to consist in our blood, bones, and souls?  And could He not also have given the gospel to us without making us slaves?

  My friends, let us then, in our afflictions, embrace and hold fast the
  gospel.  The gospel is the fulness of God.  We have the glorious and total
  weight of God’s moral character in our side of the scale.