their being removed? May
it not be that long use, and self-interest, and the love of power and
ease, have conspired to warp your judgment, blunt your sensibilities,
and cause you to view slavery through a deceptive medium?

Having, as I hope, the cordial assent of the great mass of my readers,
northern and southern, to the foregoing argument against slavery and its
perpetuity, we are now prepared to advance to the last great division of
our subject, and to inquire: What are the duties, positive and negative,
which this subject imposes on American Christians? What does it demand
that we, as Christians, should do, and refrain from doing? This question
subdivides itself thus: What ought we northern and professedly
anti-slavery Christians to do, and not do? And, next, What duties,
positive and negative, does the question devolve on professing
Christians in the slave-holding States?

I. We are to consider what we, the northern and avowedly anti-slavery
section of the American church, ought, in view of this subject, both to
do, and refrain from doing. In reply to the question, What ought we to
do? I would say,--

1. It is not only our right, but duty, temperately and with Christian
courtesy to continue to discuss this great theme, both orally and with
the pen; and especially to endeavor to bring the truth into contact with
the mind and heart of our southern brethren,--if, peradventure, we may
thus persuade them soon to cease their connection with slavery. Freedom
of discussion is one important safeguard of the public weal; and that
must be regarded as a bad, untenable cause which will not bear the test
of a full and free discussion before the world. Free inquiry, too, has
not only preceded all great reformations, but has been an important
instrument in bringing them about. That great moral change known as the
temperance reformation is but one example among many that might be
adduced. If slavery is ever to be numbered in history among the things
that are past, it will be by having Bible light and truth made to
converge upon it, through the lens of free public discussion. Hence,
believing as we do that American slavery is an enormous evil and a
gigantic wrong,--a thing with which the church should cease to have
connection as speedily as may be,--as Christians we may, we must, employ
our tongues and our pens in behalf of the enslaved, till our world
shall cease to contain such a class of men.

2. We ought so to exercise the