er_
was born in great obscurity, lived in the deepest poverty, and died the
most ignominious death. The place of his residence, his familiarity with
the outcasts of society, his welcoming assistance and support from
female hands, his casting his beloved mother, when he hung upon the
cross, upon the charity of a disciple--such things evince the depth of
his poverty, and show to what derision and contempt he must have been
exposed. Could such an one, "despised and rejected of men--a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief," play the oppressor, or smile on
those who made merchandize of the poor!

And what was the history of the _apostles_, but an illustration of the
doctrine, that "it is enough for the disciple, that he be as his
Master?" Were they lordly ecclesiastics, abounding with wealth, shining
with splendor, bloated with luxury! Were they ambitious of distinction,
fleecing, and trampling, and devouring "the flocks," that they
themselves might "have the pre-eminence!" Were they slaveholding
bishops! Or did they derive their support from the wages of iniquity and
the price of blood! Can such inferences be drawn from the account of
their condition, which the most gifted and enterprising of their number
has put upon record? "Even unto this present hour, we both hunger, and
thirst, and are naked, and _are buffetted_, and have _no certain
dwelling place, and labor working with our own hands_. Being reviled, we
bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are
made as _the filth of the world_, and are THE OFFSCOURING OF ALL THINGS
unto this day[A]." Are these the men who practiced or countenanced
slavery? _With such a temper, they WOULD NOT; in such circumstances,
they COULD NOT_. Exposed to "tribulation, distress, and persecution;"
subject to famine and nakedness, to peril and the sword; "killed all the
day long; accounted as sheep for the slaughter[B]," they would have made
but a sorry figure at the great-house or slave-market!

[Footnote A: 1 Cor. iv. 11-13.]

[Footnote B: 1 Rom. viii. 35, 36.]

Nor was the condition of the brethren, generally, better than that of
the apostles. The position of the apostles doubtless entitled them to
the strongest opposition, the heaviest reproaches, the fiercest
persecution. But derision and contempt must have been the lot of
Christians generally. Surely we cannot think so ill of primitive
Christianity as to suppose that believers, generally, refused to share