Now, if the southerner resorted to the Church in the purity of Christian motives, he would merit that praise which many are so willing to bestow.  Or, if Christianity were embraced by the southerner with heartfelt purity and faith, it would undoubtedly have a beneficial influence, elevate the character of the slave, promote kindly feelings between him and his master, and ultimately prove profitable to both.  But where Christianity, used by irreligious persons, whose very acts destroy the vitality of the means, is made the medium of enforcing superstition, and of debasing the mind of the person it degrades into submission, its application becomes nothing less than criminal.  It is criminal because it brings true religion into contempt, perverts Christianity-makes it a mockery, and gives to the degraded whites of the South a plea for discarding its precepts.  Religion-were it not used as a mechanical agency-would elevate the degraded white population of the South; they would, through its influence, become valuable citizens.

These remarks have been forced upon us by observation.  Frequently have we lamented its application, and grieved that its holy mission were made to serve the vilest purposes in a land of liberty, of Christian love.  Religion a means of degrading the masses-a subservient agent!  It is so, nevertheless; and men use it whose only desire it is to make it serve a property interest-the interest of making men, women, and children, more valuable in the market.  God ordained it for a higher purpose,—­man applies it for his benefit in the man-market.  Hence, where the means for exercising the mind upon the right is forbidden-where ignorance becomes the necessary part of the maintenance of a system, and religion is applied to that end, it becomes farcical; and while it must combine all the imperfections of the performer, necessarily tends to confine the ignorance of those it seeks to degrade, within the narrowest boundary.  There are different ways of destroying the rights of different classes; and as many different ways, after they are destroyed, of wiping out the knowledge of their ever having had rights.  But, we regret to say, that most resorted to by the South, in the face of civilisation, is the Holy Scriptures, which are made the medium of blotting out all knowledge of the rights a people once possessed.  The wrong-doer thus fears the result of natural laws; if they be allowed to produce results through the cultivation of a slave’s mind, such may prove fatal to his immediate interests.  And to maintain a system which is based on force, the southern minister of the gospel is doubly culpable in the sight of heaven; for while he stimulates ignorance by degrading the man, he mystifies the Word of God, that he may remain for ever and ever degraded.