nature and
most injurious to the general welfare. THIS RELATION, therefore, the
Golden Rule condemns. Wherever its authority prevails, this relation
must be annihilated. Mutual service and slavery--like light and
darkness, life and death--are directly opposed to, and subversive of,
each other. The one the Golden Rule can not endure; the other it
requires, honors, and blesses.

"LOVE WORKETH NO ILL TO HIS NEIGHBOR."

Like unto the Golden Rule is the second great commandment--"_Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself_." "A certain lawyer," who seems to have
been fond of applying the doctrine of limitation of human obligations,
once demanded of the Savior, within what limits the meshing of the word
"neighbor" ought to be confined. "And who is my neighbor?" The parable
of the good Samaritan set that matter in the clearest light, and made it
manifest and certain, that _every man_ whom we could reach with our
sympathy and assistance, was our neighbor, entitled to the same regard
which we cherished for ourselves. Consistently with such obligations,
can _slavery_, as a RELATION, be maintained? Is it then a _labor of
love_--such love as we cherish for ourselves--to strip a child of Adam
of all the prerogatives and privileges which are his inalienable
birth-right?--To obscure his reason, crush his will, and trample on his
immortality?--To strike home to the inmost of his being, and break the
heart of his heart?--To thrust him out of the human family, and dispose
of him as a chattel--as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under
the lash of a driver? All this, apart from every thing incidental and
extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such,
consists. All this--well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought,
clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his
thoughtless tongue or "tears be his meat night and day," fondly
cherished or cruelly murdered;--_all this_ ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE
RELATION ITSELF, _by which every slave_, AS A SLAVE, _is set apart from
the rest of the human family_. Is it an exercise of love, to place our
"neighbor" under the crushing weight, the killing power, of such a
relation?--to apply the murderous steel to the very vitals of
his humanity?

"YE THEREFORE APPLAUD AND DELIGHT IN THE DEEDS OF YOUR FATHERS; FOR THEY
KILLED THEM, AND YE BUILD THEIR SEPULCHRES."[A]

The slaveholder may eagerly and loudly deny, that any such thing is
chargeable upon him.