ual; he said:
"The Saviour of Mankind did not put an end to it by physical power, or
by the declaration of any existing illegality, in word. His mission
upon Earth was not to propagate His doctrines by force. He came to
save, not to conquer. His purpose was not to march armed legions
throughout the habitable Globe, securing the allegiance of those for
whose safety He was striving. He warred by other influences. He aimed
at the heart, principally. He inculcated his doctrines, more ennobling
than any that the World, enlightened as it was before His advent upon
Earth, had been able to discover. He taught to Man the obligation of
brotherhood. He announced that the true duty of Man was to do to others
as he would have others do to him--to all men, the World over; and
unless some convert to the modern doctrine that Slavery itself finds not
only a guarantee for its existence, but for its legal existence, in the
Scripture, excepts from the operation of the influences which His
morality brought to bear on the mind of the Christian world, the Black
man, and shows that it was not intended to apply to Black men, then it
is not true, it cannot be true, that He designed His doctrine not to be
equally applicable to the Black and to the White, to the Race of Man as
he then existed, or as he might exist in all after-time."
To the assumption that the African Slaves were too utterly deficient and
degraded, mentally and morally, to appreciate the blessings of Freedom,
he opposed the eloquent fact that "wherever the flag of the United
States, the symbol of human Liberty, now goes; under it, from their
hereditary bondage, are to be found men and women and children
assembling and craving its protection 'fleeing from' the iron of
oppression that had pierced their souls, to the protection of that flag
where they are 'gladdened by the light of Liberty.'"
"It is idle to deny," said he--"we feel it in our own persons--how, with
reference to that sentiment, all men are brethren. Look to the
illustrations which the times now afford, how, in the illustration of
that sentiment, do we differ from the Black man? He is willing to incur
every personal danger which promises to result in throwing down his
shackles, and making him tread the Earth, which God has created for all,
as a man, and not as a Slave."
Said he: "It is an instinct of the Soul. Tyranny may oppress it for
ages and centuries; the pall of despotism may hang over it; but th
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