of God in his brother man
to deny it in the sacramental wafer),--if those excellent men had been
told this, they would have shrunk in horror, and exclaimed, "Are thy
servants dogs, that they should do these things?"

Yet this is precisely the present position of the Society.

There are two ways of evading the responsibility of such inconsistency.
The first is by an appeal to the Society's Constitution, and by
claiming to interpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of law
as applied to contracts, whether between individuals or States. The
second is by denying that Slavery is opposed to the genius of
Christianity, and that any moral wrongs are the necessary results of
it. We will not be so unjust to the Society as to suppose that any of
its members would rely on this latter plea, and shall therefore confine
ourselves to a brief consideration of the other.

In order that the same rules of interpretation should be considered
applicable to the Constitution of the Society and to that of the United
States, we must attribute to the former a solemnity and importance
which involve a palpable absurdity. To claim for it the verbal accuracy
and the legal wariness of a mere contract is equally at war with common
sense and the facts of the case; and even were it not so, the party to
a bond who should attempt to escape its ethical obligation by a legal
quibble of construction would be put in coventry by all honest men. In
point of fact, the Constitution was simply the minutes of an agreement
among certain gentlemen, to define the limits within which they would
accept trust funds, and the objects for which they should expend them.

But if we accept the alternative offered by the advocates of strict
construction, we shall not find that their case is strengthened.
Claiming that where the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, it should
be interpreted according to the contemporary understanding of its
framers, they argue that it would be absurd to suppose that gentlemen
from the Southern States would have united to form a society that
included in its objects any discussion of the moral duties arising from
the institution of Slavery. Admitting the first part of their
proposition, we deny the conclusion they seek to draw from it. They are
guilty of a glaring anachronism in assuming the same opinions and
prejudices to have existed in 1825 which are undoubtedly influential in
1858. The Anti-slavery agitation did not begin until 1831,