it just as I do,' Very likely, my friends. It is very possible
that you all feel as much, and that many of you feel about it
more than I do. God knows that my regret always has been not
that I feel so much, but that I do not feel more. Would to
Heaven that neither you nor I could eat or sleep for pity, pity
for our poor down-trodden brothers and sisters. But the thing to
which I implore your attention now, is, not what we know and
feel, but the delusion which we are under, in confounding
_knowing_ with _doing_, in fancying that we are working to
abolish Slavery because we know that it is wrong. This is what I
would have you now to consider, the deception that we practise
on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we
pass off the knowledge of our duty for the performance of it.
These are two very distinct things. If you know what is right,
happy are ye if ye do it.

Observe, my friends, what it is to which I am now entreating
your consideration. It is not the wrongs nor the rights of the
oppressed upon which I am now discoursing. It is our own
personal exposure to a most serious mistake. It is a danger,
which threatens our own souls, to which I would that our eyes
should be open and on the watch.

And here, by the way, let me say that one great reason why I
refer as often as I do, to that great topic of the day, which,
in one shape or another, is continually shaking the land and
marking the age in which we live, is not merely the righting of
the wronged, but the instruction, the moral enlightenment, the
religious edification of our own hearts, which this momentous
topic affords. To me this subject involves infinitely more than
a mere question of humanity. Its political bearing is the very
least and most superficial part of it, scarcely worth noticing
in comparison with its moral and religious relations. Once,
deterred by its outside, political aspect, I shunned it as many
do still, but the more it has pressed itself on my attention,
the more I have considered it--the more and more manifest has it
become to me, that it is a subject full of light and of
guidance, of warning and inspiration for the individual soul. It
is the most powerful means of grace and salvation appointed in
the providence of Heaven, for the present day and generation,
more religious