end a fellow-creature in distress, to prevent his being sold
away from his wife and family; persons sometimes purchase slaves for the
sole purpose of emancipating them. In these, and other circumstances
which might be mentioned, no reasonable man either North or South would
ever think of pronouncing the relation a sinful one.

Nor is it my design to question the conscientiousness or piety of all
slaveholders at the South, both among the laity and clergy. Whoever
makes the sweeping assertion, that "no slaveholder can be a child of
God," gives fearful evidence that he himself is deficient in that
"charity" which "hopeth all things." There is an obvious distinction
between those who hold slaves for merely selfish purposes and regard
them as chattels, and those who repudiate this system, and regard them
as men having in common with themselves human rights, and would gladly
emancipate them were there not legal obstacles, and could they do it
consistently with their welfare, temporal and eternal.

Nor is it my purpose to advocate immediate, universal, unconditional
emancipation without regard to circumstances. This doctrine is not held
by the great mass of northern Christians. There are, no doubt, some
cases where immediate emancipation would inflict sad calamities, both
upon the slaves themselves and the community. The opinions of northern
men have often been misunderstood and misrepresented on this subject.
The ground that calm, reflecting opponents of slavery take, is, that
slaveholders should at once cease in their own minds to regard their
slaves as chattels to be bought and sold and worked for mere profit, and
that they should take immediate measures for the full emancipation of
every one, as soon as may be consistent with his greatest good, and that
of the community in which he lives.

This, it is true, is virtually immediate emancipation; for it is at once
giving up the chattel principle, and no longer regarding servants as
property to be bought and sold. It is to act on the Christian principle
of impartial love, doing to them and with them, as, in a change of
circumstances, we would have them do to and with us. This does
immediately abolish, as it should do, the main thing in slavery, and
brings those who are now bondmen into the common brotherhood of human
beings, to be treated, not as chattels and brutes, but on Christian
principles, according to the exigencies of their condition as ignorant,
degraded, and depend