come out and testify by sacrificing his worldly living and business! If
you, Mr. Brown, will at once, at whatever sacrifice, quit all connection
with this detestable and diabolical slave-trade, you will exhibit a
spectacle over which angels will rejoice, and which will strengthen and
encourage me to preach and write and testify."

Mr. Simeon Brown's usual demeanor was that of the most leathery
imperturbability. In calm theological reasoning, he could demonstrate,
in the dryest tone, that, if the eternal torment of six bodies and
souls were absolutely the necessary means for preserving the eternal
blessedness of thirty-six, benevolence would require us to rejoice in
it, not in itself considered, but in view of greater good. And when he
spoke, not a nerve quivered; the great mysterious sorrow with which the
creation groaneth and travaileth, the sorrow from which angels veil
their faces, never had touched one vibrating chord either of body
or soul; and he laid down the obligations of man to unconditional
submission in a style which would have affected a person of delicate
sensibility much like being mentally sawn in sunder. Benevolence,
when Simeon Brown spoke of it, seemed the grimmest and unloveliest of
Gorgons; for his mind seemed to resemble those fountains which petrify
everything that falls into them. But the hardest-shelled animals have a
vital and sensitive part, though only so large as the point of a needle;
and the Doctor's innocent proposition to Simeon, to abandon his whole
worldly estate for his principles, touched this spot.

When benevolence required but the acquiescence in certain possible
things which might be supposed to happen to his soul, which, after all,
he was comfortably certain never would happen, or the acquiescence in
certain supposititious sacrifices for the good of that most intangible
of all abstractions, Being in general, it was a dry, calm subject. But
when it concerned the immediate giving-up of his slave-ships and a
transfer of business, attended with all that confusion and loss which he
foresaw at a glance, then he _felt_, and felt too much to see clearly.
His swarthy face flushed, his little blue eye kindled, he walked up to
the Doctor and began speaking in the short, energetic sentences of a man
thoroughly awake to what he is talking about.

"Doctor, you're too fast. You are not a practical man, Doctor. You are
good in your pulpit;--nobody better. Your theology is clear;--nobody can
a