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KE V IE W 
 
 REY. HENRY J. VAN DYKE'S DISCOURSE 
 
 '%\t €|(trittte anir |nflucit« of ^bolitionisra," 
 
 SEEMON 
 
 Preached in the Third Reformed Presbyterian Church, Twenty-Third 
 Street, New York, on Sabbath Evening, December 23, 1360, 
 
 BY 
 
 REY. J. R. W. SLOANE, PASTOR. 
 
 ALSO, BY SPECIAL REQUEST, 
 IN THE CHURCH OP THE PURITANS (REY. DR. CHEEVER'S), 
 
 On Sabbath Kvening, Jannary 6, 1861. 
 
 •Nz\x) Yovfe: 
 WILLIAM ERVING, No. 5 BEEKMAN STREET. 
 
 1861. 
 
»N EXCHANGI 
 
 2.' 
 
S E K M N. 
 
 Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to 
 destruction. — Pnov., xxxi., 8. 
 
 Remember them that are in bonds as bound, with them.— Heb., xlii., 3. 
 Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal. — Coi.., iv., 1. 
 
 The passages wliicli I liave read, and many others scattered 
 tlirougliout the pages of Scripture, thick as stars in the galaxy, 
 furnish a sufficient warrant for calling your attention to a re- 
 markable discourse which I propose to pass under review to- 
 night. •' When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit 
 of, the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.'"' Isaiah, lix., 
 19. " I have set watchmen upon thy walls, Jerusalem, which 
 shall never hold their peace day nor night. Ye that make 
 mention of the Lord, keep not silence.'' Isaiah, Ixii., 6. 
 
 Were the author of the discourse some obscure or eccentric 
 individual, without position and without character, we might 
 pass it by in silence, leaving it to the scorn of the Christian 
 world, and the oblivion to which it must ultimately be con- 
 signed. When we consider, however, that he is a minister, said 
 to be a man of intellect and of culture, pastor of a large and 
 respectable congregation in a neighboring city, occupying an 
 important and responsible position in a religious denomina- 
 tion which is one of the most powerful and influential in 
 the country, the cause of truth and righteousness demands a 
 difTerent mode of treatment. We are to remember, also, that 
 the principles whicli he advocates are those of the Old School 
 Presbyterian Church, with which he is connected ; that his senti- 
 
ments, however abhorrent to all right Christian feeling, are 
 thundered from hundreds of pulpits Sabbath after Sabbath by 
 men who are the chosen moral and religious teachers of the 
 people — men, too, by no means contemptible or to be despised. 
 It may be said that I do injustice, when I charge upon an ec- 
 clesiastical body the sentiments of a solitary individual con- 
 nected with it. To this, I reply that the Rev. Mr. Van Dyke 
 claims that these are the principles of his Church, and no one 
 has ventured to deny the claim. I hold in my hand a volume 
 compiled of articles selected from The Princeton Review, the 
 acknowledged organ of the Old School Church. There are in 
 this book two articles, one entitled " Abolitionism," being a 
 review of certain speeches and discourses of Old School minis- 
 ters in favor of slavery ; the other entitled " Slavery," being 
 a review of the work of Dr. Channing upon that subject. These 
 articles, from the pen of the justly distinguished Dr. Hodge, 
 state the principles of the Old School Presbyterian Church on 
 this question, and have never been repudiated. Of these articles, 
 Mr. Van Dyke's sermon is virtually a reproduction, a kind 
 of echo, rather a faint and feeljle one, too, as compared 
 with the masculine vigor of the original. I do not assert that it 
 is a plagiarism, or a copy ; but I do assert that it is all here, 
 — in this book ! — even to the quotations from Dr. Channing 
 and the attacks upon Dr. Wayland ; that all the principal 
 points, definitions, and arguments are taken from these articles ; 
 that Mr. Van Dyke has put on another man's coat, after brush- 
 ing it up and slightly altering the fashion to suit the times. 
 This substantiates his own claim, and my charge, that he speaks 
 the received sentiments of his Church. It may be replied that 
 the opinions of the Church have greatly clianged since these 
 articles appeared. Ihaveno doubt a change has commenced and 
 is progressing in that body ; I have seen not a few signs which 
 indicate such a change in it ; although I have sometimes feared 
 for it, as some one said of The JVeio York Observer* that it would 
 be the last thing converted previous to the Millennium. Doubt- 
 
 * This journal is generally regarded as an organ of the Old School Presby- 
 terian Church. 
 
less there are many in its membership and ministry wlio licart- 
 ily repudiate siicli views, but it so happens tliat these persons 
 are never heard, Avhile those who speak are all upon tlic other 
 side. But again I ask, will any prominent minister of this city 
 rebuke or oppose Mr. Van Dyke? Will The Princeton Review 
 acknowledge its sins of twenty-four and sixteen years ago, and 
 condemn such sentiments ? Will The Presbyterian ? Will any 
 Minister, Magazine, Journal, or Keview, having any acknowl- 
 edged right to speak the mind of the Church, give such a de- 
 liverance ? I pause for a reply. 
 
 When Prof. Hitchcock, some two or three years since, was 
 reported as entertaining views of interpretation at variance 
 with the received doctrines of the orthodox upon that subject, 
 tlie Rev. Mr. Van Dyke was the first to sound the alarm, to warn 
 parents who had committed their daughters to the educational 
 influences of " Packer Institute"* of the dangerous heresies 
 being instilled into their unsuspecting minds by the attractive 
 lectures of the distinguished Professor of Union Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 The man whose soul was disquieted by a rumor tliat unor- 
 thodox views concerning the Book of Genesis were being pre- 
 sented to a score or two of young ladies, in the class-room of a 
 Female College, preaches to a full house on a Sabbath evening, 
 and permits to be published in a widely circulated journal 
 on Monday morning, and afterwards revises in order that it 
 may be printed in pamphlet form and scattered by thousands 
 over the country, a sermon in wliich ho declares American 
 slavery to be a divine institution, authorized of God, warranted 
 by his Word, and sanctioned by the Savior of tlie world. 
 
 Had this gentleman preached an indefinite atonement, denied 
 the doctrine of decrees, of election, of future punishment, of the 
 perseverance of the saints, or any other embodied in our Con- 
 fession of Faith, he would have been libeled for heresy, and com- 
 pelled to recant, or else have been deposed, and forced to demit 
 his pastoral charge ! But when he preaches, as God's truth, 
 what Lord Brougham calls " the wild and guilty fantasy that 
 
 Packer Institute is a large semiaary for young ladies in Brooklyn. 
 
6 
 
 man can hold property in man," defends from the Scriptures 
 what the Rev. Dr. Breckinridge, looking a Louisville audience 
 in the face, pronounced " the most atrocious system upon which 
 the sun ever shone," — what Wesley defines as " the sum of all 
 villainies," — nobody rebukes the blasphemy ; nay, so far from 
 being condemned, he is applauded, and loses neither jot nor 
 tittle of tlie respect and esteem in which he is held by his co« 
 workers in the ministry ! What wonder that infidelity abound.-^ ! 
 that profane wits sneer at professed orthodoxy ! and that the 
 way of truth is evil spoken of ! 
 
 We must remember that this is the hour of one of the stern- 
 est conflicts between despotism and liberty which tlie world has 
 ever witnessed ; an hour in which mighty scales hang poised in 
 even balance. While the friends of freedom in all lands stand, 
 with anxious eyes and palpitating hearts, awaiting the issue, 
 it is proposed to decide this contest by throwing some thousands 
 of copies of this sermon upon the side of tyranny ! 
 
 Mr. 0' Conor, at a treasonable meeting held somewhere 
 down town the other day, informed the South that their dangers 
 did not arise from the politicians, the political parties, or the 
 press, but from the conscientious convictions of the sober, se- 
 rious, and religious masses of the North, who had been taught, 
 and who firmly believe, that slavery is a crime and a sin ! With 
 an artless simplicity which in such a quarter is beautiful and 
 refreshing, he asks the southern Hotspurs to stay their treason- 
 able hands, and afford time to the North to correct its false 
 opinions ; this, he considers, can easily be accomplished, by 
 means of various agencies, chief among which he mentions 
 the preaching of Mr. Van Dyke, "et id omne genus." 
 
 Approaching the discourse more nearly, we must at the outset 
 give Mr. Van Dyke the credit of candor in his general state- 
 ment of the question. He plants himself fairly and squarely upon 
 the broad ground that slavery is right. Such a man, however 
 much we may detest his principles, or object to his mode of de- 
 fending them, commands respect for the boldness of his position^ 
 and the honesty with which he states it ; wdiile your thorough- 
 bred time-server, who always begins, " I am as much opposed 
 to slavery as any one, but — but" — and then closes his mean abuse 
 
of anti-slavery men and anti-slavery parties with whining cant 
 about the ameliorating influences of the Gospel, and an appeal 
 to the Bible argument, deserves and receives nothing but 
 sovereign contempt. 
 
 The first thing which arrests attention is our author's defi- 
 nition of abolitionism. He says, almost copying the words 
 of the Review, " By abolitionism we mean the measures and 
 principles of abolitionists. And what,'' he continues, " is an 
 abolitionist? He is one who believes that slaveholding is 
 sin, and ought therefore to be abolislied. ["Regardless of 
 consequences," says the Review, but Mr. Van Dyke more can- 
 did, and assuming broader ground, omits tliis qualification ; he 
 goes on :] " This is the fundamental, the essential, charac- 
 teristic of abolitionism— that slaveholding is sin — that hold- 
 ing men in involuntary servitude is an infringement upon the 
 rights of man, a heinous crime in the sight of God. A man 
 may believe, on political or commercial grounds, that slavery 
 is an undesirable system, and that slave labor is not the most 
 profitable ; he may have various views as to the rights of slave- 
 holders under the Constitution of the country ; he may think 
 this or that law upon the statute books of the Southern States 
 is wrong, but this does not constitute him an abolitionist ; to 
 be entitled to this name he must believe ' that slaveholding is 
 morally ivrongJ " Here we have it — the italics are his own — 
 abolitionism is the belief "that slaveholding is morally 
 WRONG." With a candor which can not be too highly extolled, 
 with a fullness of statement which leaves nothing to be desired, 
 avoiding all subtle distinctions about " malum in se''"' and such 
 like equivocations, he comes directly to the point and pro- 
 nounces every man an abolitionist who believes slavery to be 
 morally wrong. Scorning all distinctions of theory and prac- 
 tice on this great question, putting in the same category John 
 Brown and Henry Ward Beecher, Garrison and Seward, Phil- 
 lips and Lincoln, grouping together Garrisonians, radical abo- 
 litionists, political abolitionists, gradual emancipationists, and 
 republicans, he stamps all with the same brand, " abolitionists," 
 — writes this same superscription over all, and proceeds to 
 denounce them as covenant breakers, haters of God, and foes to 
 the best interests of human society ! 
 
At tliis point, our admiration of Mr. Yan Dyke's candor 
 must, unfortunately, cease. It would call me entirely too far 
 from the main question to enter into a critical examination of all 
 his authorities. I stop only to say, that I do not accept the in- 
 terpretation which Mr. Barnes* gives of Mr. Yan Dyke's text, 
 for reasons hereafter to be stated ; and I repudiate Dr.Wayland's 
 explanation of the supposed silence of Christ. I can not omit, 
 liowever, to notice the disingenuous use which Mr. Yan Dyke 
 makes of McKnight, of whom he says, " Let me quote another 
 testimony, on this point, from an eminent Scotch divine, I mean 
 Dr. McKnight, ivhose Exposition of the Epistles is a standard 
 work in Great Britain and this coimtry, and whose associations 
 must exempt him from all suspicion of pro-slavery prejudice.^' As 
 to the standard character of Dr. McKnight's work, hear the 
 celebrated Robert Haldane, in the appendix to his great work 
 upon Romans, p. 760, Carter's edition : " In adverting, in the 
 foregoing exposition, to the fundamental heresies of Mr. Stuart, 
 I have also pointed out, in various places, the deeply heretical 
 character of Dr. McKnight's Commentary, and have stated 
 enough to draw the attention of the reader to the errors of 
 that very dangerous and unsound commentator. Dr. McKnight's 
 work on the Epistles has, probably, done more extensive mis- 
 chief m this country, than any other that can be named. His 
 ' Audacious IIeterodoxy,' as it is termed in the Presbyterian 
 Review of May, 1836, and daring perversions of the Word of 
 God, have been most pernicious !" 
 
 I am aware that one man's orthodoxy is another man's hete- 
 rodoxy, but I am now speaking to an Old School Presbyterian, 
 who will not venture to deny or controvert this opinion of Mc- 
 Knight, as expressed by Robert Haldane. But Mr. Yan Dyke 
 is yet more disingenuous in his assertion that McKnight's as- 
 sociations must exempt him from all suspicion of pro-slavery 
 prejudice ; such a declaration might, with equal justice, be 
 made concerning Rev. Gardiner Spring, D.D., of this city, or 
 Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina. McKnight was born, be it 
 remembered, in 1721, and died in 1800 ;— a period in which 
 " pro-slavery prejudice " was as prevalent in the churches of 
 
 * Rev. Albert Barnes, author of Notes on (he New Testament. 
 
9 
 
 Great Britain as it is now in the cliurclics of the United 
 States ; liis commentaries were publislied in 1795, and althouf^h 
 Wilberforce and Clarkson had been at work ten years to get 
 the African slave-trade abolished when his book was publish- 
 ed, he did not find it in his heart to say one word in favor of 
 their cause. 
 
 Yet, Mr. Yan Dyke attempts to carry back the present anti- 
 slavery sentiment of the Scotch divines, and attach it to a man 
 who died seven years before the slave-trade was abolished, 
 and thirty-four years before the accomplishment of West 
 India emancipation, and who, so far as I know, never wrote a 
 single word in condemnation of slavery or in favor of eman- 
 cipation, 
 
 Ilis first proposition is stated in these words : " Abolitionism" 
 (the belief that slavery is morally wrong) " has no foundation 
 in the Scriptures." Passing the patriarchal age, and for some 
 unaccountable reason omitting the beautiful and powerful argu- 
 ment which the apologists of the " patriarchal institution" have 
 been accustomed to draw from the three hundred and eighteen 
 trained and armed servants of Abraham, to say nothing of the 
 curse pronounced upon Canaan, he comes at once to the law of 
 Moses, quotes the usual passages, omits with oblivious indiffer- 
 ence all the explanations which the great scholars on our 
 side have given of these laws, sets up a man or two of straw, 
 knocks them down as easily as a boy his nine pins, asserts that 
 God sanctioned slaveholding, that all the abolitionists in 
 the world will not make him believe that God ever sanctioned 
 sin, and that, tlierefore, slavery is not sinful. To this I re- 
 ply by a direct contradiction of the premise, and a denial that 
 God sanctioned slavery under the Theocracy, or that slavery 
 ever existed there, except in direct violation of his law and will. 
 This I proceed to substantiate, not by assertion, but by argu- 
 ments patent to every understanding. 
 
 In the first place, there is no word in the Hebrew language 
 for slave, none for slavery. There is a word for servant, and 
 one for servitude, but no word like our word slavery, denoting 
 a condition 'of involuntary servitude ; no specific term that ex- 
 presses that form of relation between man and man. It may be 
 
10 
 
 replied that the absence of the word does not imply the nega- 
 tion of the thing ; there is no such word as slave in the law 
 technically called the " Fugitive Slave Law," yet no one denies 
 that slaves are meant. We do not, however, rest the argument 
 upon the mere absence of the word from a particular document, 
 but from the entire language ; had slavery been a divine insti- 
 tution, as Mr. Yan Dyke argues, surely there would have been 
 a word to express the idea specifically. The fact that there 
 is no such word is a strong presumption that there was no such 
 thing. 
 
 In the second place, there is no account in the Old Testament 
 of any permission for the sale by one person to another, of a 
 third who was allowed no voice nor will in the transaction ; no 
 such transaction is recorded ; on the contrary, all such traffic in, 
 human flesh, in " slaves and souls of men," was absolutely pro- 
 hibited ; it never was attempted except in direct violation of the 
 law, and never failed to bring down upon the people the wither- 
 ing curse of Heaven. There was no purchase of men, except 
 from themselves, by voluntary contract for a specified sum, for a 
 definite time, known and agreed upon by tlie parties ; there 
 were no slave-hunts in other countries for a supply of servants ; 
 there was not a single barracoon on the borders ; there were no 
 slave-pens in the cities — no auction blocks, upon which men, 
 women, and children might be placed and sold to the highest 
 bidder in all the land. You might have passed tlirough all the 
 tribes from Dan to Beersheba, without ever meeting a coffle of 
 slaves ! 
 
 In the third place, the special statute designed to prevent 
 this crime, " He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he 
 be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death," for- 
 ever brands with the stamp of God's reprobation and curse 
 American slavery, and rendered the practice of such an iniqui- 
 ty in the Jewish Commonwealth impossible. The law does not 
 read, he that stealeth a slave and selleth him, nor he that steal- 
 eth a servant even, and selleth him, but he that stealeth a man. 
 It was the crime of stealing a man from himself, of removing 
 him from a condition of freedom to a condition of bondage, as 
 our slaves were stolen in the first instance from Africa, against 
 
11 
 
 which this law was directed ; the very grossest outrage that 
 can be perpetrated on humanity, a crime in Ood's siglit of the 
 deepest dye, and therefore adjudged worthy of the severest pun- 
 ishment known to the divine law, namely, death. Dare Mr. 
 Van Dyke deny this ? So have said all the churches ; — his own 
 included, in its testimony of 1801 — previous to its enlighten- 
 ment and sanctification by the price of cotton, sugar, and to- 
 bacco ! So have all tlie civilized nations of the world agreed, 
 by declaring the foreign slave-trade murder and 'piracy, words all 
 too mild to express the enormity of its guilt. There was no such 
 crime as slave-stealing known in Israel, for the simple reason 
 that there were no slaves to steal. However criminal helping a 
 man to freedom may be, it is not forbidden in the divine word ; 
 on the contrary, as we shall presently learn, something like it is 
 highly commended. But the crime of man-stealing was known 
 in the heathen nations round about Israel ; and against the prac- 
 tice of such an enormity, God guarded his chosen people by 
 the fiery sword of this express and unqualified enactment. Can 
 any man deny that American slavery originated in man-steal- 
 ing? If so, does it not stand condemned and cursed in its very 
 root, by the law of that God whose judgment is according to 
 truth? Moreover, as if the Spirit designed to anticipate all 
 subterfuges, it is added, " and if he be found in his hand, he 
 shall surely be put to death." Had it been made for our sys- 
 tem, and designed to meet the argument with which it is at- 
 tempted to be supported, it could not have been more specific. 
 
 How many transfers then, I ask, in the name of all that is 
 sacred, does it require to transform this vice into a virtue? — this 
 crime, against which the judgments of Heaven are denounced, 
 into a grand missionary enterprise, and its practice into the 
 highest exercise of a heavenly beneficence and piety ? " Nobody 
 pretends any thing of this kind," replies some well-meaning indi- 
 vidual, about forty years behind the present stage of the con- 
 troversy ; " the southern people would be glad to get rid of 
 their slaves, if they could, but do not know what to do with 
 them." 
 
 I hold in my hand the discourse of Dr. Palmer, of New 
 Orleans, delivered on Thanksgiving Day, a man of whom Mr. 
 
12 
 
 Van Dyke says, " that his soul is knit to him with the sympa- 
 thy of Jonathan for David." From this discourse he quotes a 
 long passage in a foot-note to tlie pamphlet edition of his ser- 
 mon, with high approval. Here are the closing sentences : 
 " My servant, whether born in my house or bouglit with my 
 money, stands to me in the relation of a child. Though provi- 
 dentially owing me service, which providentially I am boiaid to 
 exact, he is, nevertheless, ray brother and my friend ; and I am 
 to him a guardian and a father. He leans upon me for protec- 
 tion, for counsel, and for blessing" [especially the blessing!], 
 " and so long as the relation continues no power, but the power 
 of iUmighty God, shall come between him and me." Here is 
 another passage from the same discourse, which Mr. Tan Dyke 
 does 7iot quote, " This argument, then, which sweeps over the 
 entire circle of our relations, touches the four cardinal points 
 of duty to ourselves, to our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty 
 God. It establishes the nature and solemnity of our present 
 trust, to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic 
 servitude, with the right unchallenged by man, to go and root itself 
 wherever Providence and nature may carry it." This chivalrous 
 sentence from New Orleans — bristling with Dr. Palmer's own 
 italics — seems to bave been rather uncourageously omitted by 
 his enthusiastic friend on Brooklyn Heights. " This trust," he 
 adds, " we will discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. 
 Though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet, should the mad- 
 ness of the hour appeal to the arbitration of the sword, we will 
 not shrink even from the baptism of fire. If modern cru- 
 saders stand in serried ranks upon some plain of Esdraelon, 
 there shall we be, in defense of our trust. Not till the last 
 man has fallen behind the last rampart shall it drop from 
 our hands ; and then only in surrender to the God who gave 
 it." Well done. Dr. Palmer ! Here is the exhibition of a 
 courage second only to the piety which may reasonably be 
 supposed to characterize one who has been called to the pas- 
 torate of one of the largest, wealthiest, and most influential 
 churches in this city ;* also to the important post of assisting 
 
 • Dr. Palmer recently received a call to the late Dr. J. W. Alexander's church 
 in Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
13 
 
 in the education of the rising ministry of the Old Sciiool Church 
 in Princeton! Mr, Van Dylce, with characteristic modesty, 
 charges abolitionism with being not only a fanatical but a 
 bloody spirit ; and almost in the same breath, declares that his 
 soul is knit, like tlie soul of Jonathan to David, to this modern 
 "Peter the Hermit," who declares a crusade of blood, for the 
 purpose of carrying slavery, not only into all the territories of 
 the United States, but into all parts of the habitable world. 
 In the fourth place, the law for the fugitive rendered 
 involuntary servitude in the Hebrew Commonwealth impos- 
 sible — "Thou shalt not deliver unto liis master the servant 
 which is escaped from his master unto thee ; he shall dwell 
 with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose 
 in one of thy gates, where it liketli him best : thou shalt not 
 oppress him." This law, as explicit as it is humane and merci- 
 ful, guarded against the tyranny of masters, and gave the sacred 
 right of protection to all under the Theocracy. What a con- 
 trast to the infernal enactment which disgraces our Christian 
 nation ! Yet, in the face of this benevolent decree of God, this 
 man, professing to stand upon the Mosaic institutions, calls 
 upon the Northern States to repeal their " Liberty bills," in 
 order that he who is flying toil-worn and weary, but with 
 the light of the north star in his eye, and the light of the 
 hope of liberty in his heart, from the prison-house of bond- 
 age, may be pursued by the hounds of the law, seized by the 
 strong arm of the civil power, and thrust back into that hell of 
 toil, suffering, and woe, from which he is attempting to escape ! 
 Would you do it ? Not one of you ! Would I ? Not though op- 
 posed, as Luther said, by as many devils as there are tiles 
 on the roofs of the houses ! Would Mr, Van Dyke ? No ; 
 I do him the honor to believe that he would not ; that 
 his words belie his heart. Try him with the case men- 
 tioned the other evening by our eloquent young friend, Mr. 
 Tilton." A mother, whose hour is near, hastening by flight to 
 a land of liberty, in order that her child may be born not a 
 
 * Mr. Tilton had delivered a lecture a few evenings before in the Third Re- 
 formed Presbyterian Church. 
 
u 
 
 slave but free ! No imaginary case ! Just such a one occurred 
 under my own roof, although, unfortunately, I was absent at the 
 time. There were those there, however, who knew how to give 
 protection and sympathy. When pressed to stay until her tria,l 
 should be over, she replied in words which so far surpass the 
 noblest utterances of Roman mothers in pathos and sublimity, 
 that I would scorn to place them in comparison — " I can not 
 stay ; I want my first child to be born in a free land !" God 
 bless her, it was born in a free land ! Mr. Van Dyke could 
 not stand and say, looking into the eyes of those mothers 
 to whom he ministers from Sabbath to Sabbath, " I would 
 have sent her back." If he should say it, who would believe 
 him ? If he should have done it, who would not despise him? 
 Yet, what an account that man will have to render who preaches 
 such doctrines in the abstract, or advises that others shall do 
 that wliich is so contrary to all principles of natural kindness, 
 to say nothing of justice, and so directly in the very teeth of 
 God's express command ! — " Inasmucli as ye did it not to one 
 of the least of these ye did it not to me." 
 
 In the fifth place, the law of the Jubilee rendered slavery 
 impossible among the chosen people — " And ye shall hallow 
 the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land 
 unto all the inhabitants thereof." No limitation, no restriction; 
 the Jubilee was glorious, because it was a proclamation of 
 liberty to all without distinction ; but if it had no reference to 
 tlie foreign-born servant, it would have been a farce, a mockery, 
 for all Hebrew servants went out at any rate by the law of tlieir 
 service. Mr. Van Dyke affirms that there was no jubilee for 
 the heathen servant, nor for the Hebrew whose ear was bored. 
 The idea, as it relates to the latter, is too absurd to be tolerated 
 for a moment. Is it to be supposed that any man who pos- 
 sessed common sense would, merely because he loved his mas- 
 ter, consign himself, wife, children, and children's children, to 
 the latest generation, to a hopeless bondage ? — or, that God 
 would have enacted a law which would have permitted such 
 injustice to arise from such folly ? Tlie truth is, that the term 
 forever, in this connection, is idiomatic, and means only to the 
 year of jubilee. The very nature of the regulations as to land 
 
15 
 
 and property make tins certain. The argument is fully elabo- 
 rated in the larger works upon this subject. If any thing can be 
 made clear, this has been, that the jubilee was a proclamation 
 throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof; and 
 that the first notes which pealed from every hill-top of Judea, 
 on the first morning of this auspicious year, proclaimed to all 
 servants the termination of their servitude. Wliat a moral 
 obliquity does it argue to find a man desirous to construe every 
 passage in whicli there is room for a doubt, in favor of this 
 atrocity ! I do not wonder that a distinguished man said of 
 such characters, that their god was Ids devil. 
 
 In the sixth place, the whole nature of the covenant which 
 God made with Israel was for the security of freedom and justice 
 to all, not for the establishment of a hateful tyranny. Mr. Van 
 Dyke says, and says truly, " There was not one slave in all that 
 mighty host who gathered around Mount Sinai, to receive the 
 law by which their future institutions were to be moulded." 
 The admission is important ; it shows, at least, that if that vast 
 multitude of slaves which Abraham possessed descended to 
 his sons, the stock had by this time run out. But observe 
 what a view this presents of the justice of God. He did not 
 simply permit, did not merely " wink at," this system, but actu- 
 ally ordained it, established it by positive law where it did not 
 exist — established a trade in slaves in the wilderness, between 
 Israel and the heathen nations ! The absurdities start up before 
 this assertion like the men of Roderick Dim in the presence of 
 Fitz James. " Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress 
 \\\m,for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt ^ " Also thou 
 shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger 
 seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt ^ " Thou shalt not 
 glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of 
 thy vineyard ; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger. 
 For I am the Lord thy God." " And if a stranger sojourn 
 with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger 
 that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one horn among 
 you, thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the 
 land of Egypt." We can explain the avowal and advocacy 
 of such sentiments as Mr, Yan Dyke's only by a reference to 
 
16 
 
 the blinding nature of a monster iniquity. Such men have been 
 so long accustomed to plead and apologize for slavery, that 
 they are at length absolutely incapable of distinguishing right 
 from wrong, darkness from light, sweet from bitter. 
 
 •' Vjpe is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 That to be hated needs but to be seen, 
 But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace.*' 
 
 In the seventh place, I do assert, notwithstanding Mr. Van 
 Dyke's disclaimer, that the argument for polygamy, the twin 
 sister of slavery, is stronger than for slavery. I can assure him 
 that the day is not far distant when his arguments for oppres- 
 sion will be as abhorrent to all right-thinking men, as those of 
 Brigham Young for the accursed system which he has estab- 
 lished in Utah. Polygamy was tolerated, slavery was not. 
 
 In the eighth place, were wc to grant all that these men 
 claim for the system which prevailed in the Jewish Common- 
 wealth, they Avould be as far from having found any justifica- 
 tion of American slavery as ever. They must needs show the 
 same divine warrant as they suppose the Jews to have possess- 
 ed. They must take all the laws and regulations with it ; for 
 in cases of divine authority it will not do to select ; all must go 
 together. But how long would American slavery last under 
 those laws ? 
 
 They would pierce it througli and through in a thousand 
 directions. Their enactment would be equivalent to immediate 
 emancipation. American slavery could not live a day under 
 single enactments relating to Hebrew servitude. Give the 
 American slave about three-sevenths or one-half of his time, as 
 was given to the servants among God's people, and how much 
 would slave property be worth in the South ? 
 
 But what sort of slavery is it for which Mr. Van Dyke pleads ? 
 He can not in accordance with his Presbyterian principles (be- 
 lief in the unity of the race, descent from Adam, and represent- 
 ation through him,) put it on the ground of diversity of color 
 and inferiority of race. Either of these positions would over- 
 throw his entire system ,of belief— he knows that God hath 
 made of one blood all nations of men. The logical consequence 
 
17 
 
 of his pica then is for Uic enslaving of the white, as much as the 
 black ; but would he dare to say this ? What is the ground of 
 riglit on wliich he plants himself? This he has not told us. 
 He would be curious to hear an explanation of this point. 
 
 But, I am asked then, what was the nature of Hebrew servi- 
 tude? I answer, a voluntary contract entered into between 
 two parties, and only two, upon the ground of value received 
 and service performed, so hedged about with careful and just 
 enactments that the rights of both parties were fully secured. 
 " Born in the house," " bought with his money," " possession," 
 " inheritance," " possession forever," etc., are idiomatic phrases, 
 and can not by any process of philological or critical torture 
 be made to mean " slavery" — while all the laws and regulations 
 which I have cited, and I have but glanced at points capable of 
 indefinite expansion, together with many others just as forcible, 
 make it absolutely certain that no such system did or could 
 exist. Men will not believe, all arguments will not make them 
 believe, and are thankful they are not permitted to believe, 
 that the God of Heaven authorized one man to live on the un- 
 requited toil of another. That is injustice, there is a law writ- 
 ten upon the heart, and the only cfi'cct which such arguments 
 produce is to shake men's faith in the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures. The very light of nature in man gives the lie to 
 all attempts to prove that one man has a right to the labor of 
 another to whom he gives no equivalent. If Mr. Van Dyke 
 pronounces an appeal to the light of nature infidelity, he may 
 go and settle it with Paul and the Westminster divines. 
 
 We come now to the New Testament. We confess our as- 
 tonishment that he did not shrink back affrighted at the mon- 
 strous character of his assertions and inferences. Slavery he 
 affirms was just as common in Judea in the time of Christ as 
 to-day in South Carolina ! That Christ was familiar with the 
 laws of Roman slavery ! That no man, having any pretensions 
 to scholarship or candor, would allege that these laws were as 
 mild as the very worst statutes of the slave-codes of modern 
 times ! That the Savior was acquainted with the law that gave 
 the master the power of life and death over his slave, and with 
 all the vast abuses of the system, and that nevertheless, there is 
 2 
 
18 
 
 no rebuke or deuunciation of the system. That while all other 
 sins are freely and fully condemned, this is never mentioned but 
 in terms of the utmost respect. Of course, there is but one infer- 
 ence — He approved. Christ then approved a system that gave 
 the master the right to put his slave to death at his pleasure, a 
 system never matched in atrocity except by that prevailing 
 among us, one which the writers of tliat age mention only to 
 excite abhorrence of a period tliat could endure such wicked- 
 ness, one which has called forth the most indignant bursts of 
 condemnation from all modern writers who have treated of 
 that epoch, and which more than any otlier cause, perhaps more 
 than all other causes, contributed to the overthrow of tlie proud 
 fabric of the Roman Empire. It remained for the Christian 
 ministry of this land to find this lowest deep of moral perver- 
 sion, and to baptize this horror of the centuries with the sanc- 
 tion of Jesus Christ ! 
 
 It is not difficult to detect the monstrous fallacy of the 
 position. The assumption that slavery existed at that time in 
 Judea is wholly gratuitous ; the statement is without the shad- 
 ow of proof; on the contrary, forbidden as it waste Israel, 
 there is every reason to conclude that it did not exist there in 
 any form or degree, and that Christ did not come in contact 
 with a slave during the course of his ministry. Will Mr. Van 
 Dyke tell us what sort of slavery this was which Christ did 
 not reprove? Roman slavery, he says. What then had be- 
 come of Hebrew servitude ? When did it disappear ? When did 
 the other atrocious system take its place in Judea? But who 
 does not see the fallacy of the attempt to sanction, from the 
 silence of Christ in the New Testament, a system not only so 
 opposed to all principles of natural justice, but so directly in 
 the face of those tremendous denunciations against oppres- 
 sion in the Old Testament ? The sect of the Essenes existed in 
 the time of Christ. Yet they are not even mentioned ; no allu- 
 sion to them even by him or his apostles — except very obscure 
 references -to this sect be allowed in one or two passages, 
 are we, therefore, to conclude that Christ approved of their 
 perversions of the Scriptures and their denial of the doctrine 
 of the resurrection ? Christ does not mention idolatry, did he 
 
19 
 
 therefore approve of idol worship ? He does not once mention 
 or allude to the g-ladiatorial combats; arc they, thcrcrorc, a 
 divine institution? But the apostles spoke of these things, 
 says an objector. They spoke nothing of the Esscnes, or, at 
 any rate, obscurely, and, if any thing, respectfully ; so of the 
 gladiatorial contests. They spoke also of slavery. The law, 
 Paul reminds Timothy, was made for man- stealers, an advice 
 not unnecessary in some quarters at the present time ; at any 
 rate, nothing could be more delightful than a discourse from Mr. 
 Van Dyke npon that declaration. Fancy now this reverend 
 apologist for slavery attempting an argument with some distin- 
 guishe(J champion of " the ring ;" he commences by calling prize- 
 fighting unnatural, cruel, brutal, wicked, or by whatever other 
 epithet he may find most expressive of his abhorrence and de- 
 testation of such brutality. Stop a moment, if you please, says 
 the gladiator, " I am no heathen philosopher, groping my way 
 by the feeble glimmerings of the light of nature, no modern in- 
 fidel appealing to the corrupt and fickle tribunal of human rea- 
 son ; I plant myself upon the Inspired Word ; my motto is ' To 
 the law and to the testimony.' Where in the New Testament, 
 either by Christ or his apostles, is my calling forbidden?" 
 While Mr. Van Dyke is thinking up his passages, our champion 
 turns upon him, " Every body knows, sir, that it is no sin to 
 knock a man down under certain circumstances ; as to its cruel- 
 ties, they are nothing compared to what occurs sometimes in 
 families ; there is, sir, as you have stated, a child in an orphan 
 asylum in Brooklyn, who was thrown by its father into the fire 
 and almost roasted to death ; better save your ' tears and shrieks' 
 for children, and leave men to take care of themselves. So far 
 from being inhuman, as you represent it, we are the very best of 
 friends ; besides the Scriptures always speak of it in terms most 
 respectful ; you don't consider yourself better than the Apostle 
 Paul do you, Mr. Van Dyke ? Hear what he says, ' So fight I, 
 not as one that beateth the air.' ' I keep my body under,' a clear 
 reference to our abstemious habits, when preparing for the com- 
 bat. More than this, sir, he compares the heavenly assembly 
 to the respectable company which assemble to witness our man- 
 ly sport, ' Therefore, seeing we also are compassed about 
 
20 
 
 with so great a cloud of witnesses.' These things, too, were 
 spoken in the time of the Roman games, much more brutal than 
 ours, as every scholar and man of candor must admit, before 
 the ameliorating influences of the Gospel had produced so 
 marked a change upon our pursuit !" Where is the Rev. Apol- 
 ogist in such an argument ? 
 
 But, then, was Christ silent? 1 answer most positively that 
 he was not. All things which he said are not recorded, for 
 the simple reason that the world would not contain the books ; 
 but, did he not constantly appeal to the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures? Are we, in order to please a few contemptible slave- 
 holders, to suppose that he omitted those passages, which 
 denounce oppression ? And if those passages did not condemn 
 Roman slavery, for what purpose were they written ? What is 
 oppression if slavery is not ? But, again : the great principles of 
 his teachings are diametrically opposed to all such iniquities ; 
 and, were men to practice them, American slavery would term- 
 inate before to-morrow's sun shall sink in the west, "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," words quoted almost 
 literally from the Mosaic law, with reference to men of another 
 race ; one of those two commandments upon which hang all the 
 law and the prophets. Does the slaveholder love his neighbor 
 as himself? Can the toiling slave obey this divine command? 
 I am sure I could not were I in his place, and my neighbor 
 interpreted to mean my master or overseer. Christ's first 
 sermon was an abolition discourse, from an incendiary publica- 
 tion called the Prophesy of Isaiali, an anti-slavery book of the 
 Old Testament. The text which he selected was this memor- 
 able passage, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, be- 
 cause he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor, 
 to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, 
 and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised." " Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and 
 the prophets." But what is the great sum of Christ's teaching? 
 Love to man and to God. What the great end, but to fill the 
 earth with love and peace ? As far as the east is distant from the 
 west, as far as light is from darkness, as heaven from hell, so far 
 
21 
 
 are the teachings of the divine Savior of the world from any 
 alliance with this darlv and bloody despotism. 
 
 The teachings of the apostles are precisely what might 
 have been anticipated from men who had learned in such 
 a scliool. There is not one word of approval, nor the 
 slightest indication that slaveholders were admitted to the 
 church. Slaves were admitted, but it is susceptible of 
 demonstration that slaveholders were not received into 
 the communion and fellowship of the Apostolic Church. 
 The Roman law accounted slaves as pro nuUis, pro mortuis, 
 pro quadruped ibus, as nobodies, as dead, as brutes ; Christian- 
 ity recognized them as immortal beings, elevated them to the 
 rank of men, and welcomed them to all the privileges and 
 immunities of the spiritual commonwealth. The early Chris- 
 tians had all things in common ; they were exhorted " Let each 
 esteem other better than themselves, in honor preferring one 
 another." Husbands were exhorted to love their wives, and 
 wives their husbands, children to obey their parents, and parents 
 to provide for their children, and bring them up in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord, all of Avhich duties are impossible 
 of performance in a relation wliich is one of absolute authority 
 on the one side, and of absolute subjection upon the other, and 
 which annihilates the institution of the family. " Masters," says 
 the Apostle, "give unto your servants that which is just and 
 equal." This is equivalent to a proclamation of immediate eman- 
 cipation ! The law of American slavery is, " black men have no 
 rights that white men are bound to respect," Masters give unto 
 your servants that which is just and equal. Is it equal justice that 
 a servant should have a right to his wife and children ? Give 
 him that right, and American slavery is doomed. Is it just and 
 equal that the servant be taught to read the Word of God ? 
 Give our slaves the alphabet, and they will tear down the 
 prison-house of their bondage ere ten years have come and 
 gone. Just and equal ? Let this be given to the slaves, and the 
 homes and plantations of the South are theirs ; for, have they 
 not made them with the toil of their hands, the sweat of their 
 dark faces ? We have never claimed for them that which is 
 just and equal, only that they be permitted to go out free, 
 
22 
 
 although spoiled, and robbed of every thing ; this wQ have 
 asked, and intend to keep on asking, until God, in his mercy, 
 grants our request. This passage forever settles the question 
 of American slavery, so far as the New Testament is concerned, 
 just as it settled the question of Roman slavery in favor of 
 liberty in the early cliurch. The passage which Mr. Van Dyke 
 has selected as his text gives no countenance to the system. I 
 might advise a slave to submission and respectful treatment of 
 his master, not because the master had any right to him, butybr 
 his own sake. Granting that " under the yoke"' means slaves, there 
 is nothing gained to his cause. I have no doubt, however, that 
 when properly understood, this passage cuts through and through 
 the system, like a two-edged sword, indicating two classes of ser- 
 vants, those who had unbelieving masters, and, therefore, were 
 under the yoke ; and those who had believing masters, and were, 
 therefore, free ; demonstrating that Roman slavery was totally 
 inconsistent with the practice of Christianity. 
 
 So much for the Scripture argument. The only excuse 
 which we can make for a man who attempts to justify, 
 from the Scriptures, a system which originates in the 
 atrocious slave-trade, which denies all secular and religious 
 instruction to its victims, which makes raercliandise of men, 
 women, and children, which is the very nursery of petty 
 despots, promotes every hateful immorality, and originates no 
 virtue, is, that he is given over to strong delusion to believe 
 a lie. 
 
 Poor Dr. Thornwell of South Carolina, and his brother in 
 distress, the bellicose Dr. Palmer of New Orleans, despairing 
 of ever being able to convince the North that slavery is not 
 sinful but a most lovely, beneficent, patriarchal, and divine in- 
 stitution, are already shaking off the dust of their feet and 
 tearing their raiment as a witness against us. In other words, 
 they are preaching disunion witii all their might, while Dr. Mc- 
 Vicar and Rev. Mr. Prentiss (he should be D.D.,) arc charming 
 delighted audiences with their scriptural arguments for the 
 slave-trade, with special reference to its adaptation to the 
 spiritual wants of the negro race ! Was there ever s\ic\\ an 
 instance of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness ? Did 
 
23 
 
 impiety ever go beyond this ? Can such diabolical perversion 
 of the truth be matclied ? Yes — by the man who stands in a 
 northern pulpit, and approves ; declaring that his soul is knit 
 to such men by the Word and Spirit of God as the soul of 
 Jonathan to that of David, and denouncing as madmen and 
 fanatics those who will not indorse his " doctrines of devils." 
 
 Mr. Van Dyke's second proposition is — " The principles of 
 abolition have been propagated chiefly by misrepresentation and 
 abuse.'"'. Still keep in mind his definition of abolitionism, the be- 
 lief that slavery is morally icrojig. This second proposition de- 
 clares that the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, which has so 
 lately spoken in thunder tones that have carried dismay to the 
 heart of this despotism, has been produced by misrepresentations 
 of slavery and abuse of slaveholders, which declaration I pro- 
 nounce as in itself a misrepresentation, and a slander upon the 
 most intelligent people upon the face of tlie earth. To declare 
 that the sober, intelligent, and conscientious masses of the 
 North have been influenced to hate slavery, in some instances 
 to enact statutes for the better protection of the fugitive, and 
 at length to place in the presidential chair a man who believes 
 slavery to be a social, moral, and political evil ; to declare that 
 all this has been produced by misrepresentation and abuse, ex- 
 hibits a recklessness of statement, an audacity of impudence, 
 absolutely inconceivable. 
 
 Yet, this is what Mr. Van Dyke asserts, what Mr. 'Conor 
 repeats ; the pulpit in this instance leading the bar. 
 
 As to Dr. Channing's opinion twenty -four years ago, of some 
 who were then technically styled abolitionists, I have nothing 
 to say — perhaps it was just — more probably unjust, it matters 
 not — the opinion is rather too old for present use. Nor do I 
 care to justify all that has been said and done by the friends of 
 freedom during the thirty years of this increasing conflict. I 
 could not vindicate all that was said or done by the great 
 reformers of the sixteenth century. They were sometimes rash, 
 vindictive, fierce ; they used terrible weapons ; sometimes, 
 doubtless misrepresented their opponents. But what does this 
 prove ? that their cause was not just and good ? By no means ; 
 onlv that men are men, not ano-cls. So we find them in all his- 
 
24 
 
 tory. They were riglit, and conquered not by misrepresenta- 
 tion or abuse of their opponents, but by the invincible power 
 of truth. So I say of this glorious anti-slavery movement, if 
 there have been mistakes or misrepresentations, if foolish or 
 wicked men have allied themselves to its interests, (and in what 
 good cause are such not found ?) these have retarded, not ad- 
 vanced its progress ; it has conquered, not by these means, but 
 in spite of them. But how does he sustain this assertion? 
 Resting his weakness upon the twenty -four-years-old testimony 
 of Dr. Channing, to which I have alluded, he proceeds to de- 
 clare that we have misrepresented the legal relation existing 
 between master and slave. He asserts that the laws of all 
 civilized countries recognize property in man ! This will be 
 news to the great English jurists. But the proof is at hand. 
 In case of a railroad disaster, the wife can obtain damages for 
 the loss of that piece of property, that " chattel personal" which 
 she calls her husband ; the husband in the same way for the 
 loss of the valuable services of that " possession forever" which 
 he calls his wife ! Well, this is admirable ! To say nothing 
 of the refined and spiritual idea of marriage which it implies, 
 we consider it a capital idea ; it has all the qualities of a good 
 rule ; it works both ways. We hope to see it at once carried 
 into effect ; by all means let it be understood that the slave has 
 the same right of property in the master which the master has 
 in the slave. As the property is mutual, a kind of joint stock 
 in the case of the husband and wife, so let it be with the mas- 
 ter and slave — the latter having as sacred a right to sell the 
 former, or his wife and children, as the former has to deal thus 
 with him. With this arrangement, I should be quite satisfied. 
 Again : he complains of the manner in which abolitionists 
 have employed those instances of cruelty which are so frequent 
 in all slaveholding communities ; avers, that upon the same 
 principle we might condemn the family ; husbands abuse wives 
 — wives, husbands, sometimes ! — parents, children — children, 
 parents, etc. To this I reply, that it is an old rule and a logical 
 one, that " The tree is known by his fruit" — one that we are 
 warranted to apply, " Ye shall know them by their fruits." 
 Thus have men argued against all tyrannies and oppressions 
 
25 
 
 since the world began ; thus would we test the family relation ; 
 if it was found productive of more evil than of compensatory 
 good — the fruitful parent of vices and miseries, rather than of 
 happiness and virtue — we would all say at once, down with it. 
 This trick, however, which the apologists and defenders of 
 slavery have of incessantly comparing it to the family, is 
 deceptive. The comparison is absolutely blasphemous. The 
 family is a divine institution, older than the church, older than 
 the commonwealth — the parent of both, originating in the 
 divine love, crowned through all the ages with richest blessings 
 — " The purest source of bliss that has survived the Fall." 
 Slavery is simple oppression, originating in mciii's pride and 
 covetousness, prompted and impelled by Mammon, " the least 
 erected spirit that fell from heaven." The very point which 
 clinches the argument against this system, and brands it with 
 Heaven's reprobation and curse, is the undeniable fact, that it 
 forbids marriage, subverts the family, and renders either im- 
 possible. 
 
 There has been no misrepresentation, however ; the man is yet 
 to be born who can paint slavery in its true colors ; the word is 
 yet to be coined which expresses the combination of wickedness 
 which constitutes its essence. Could it rise in all its dreadful 
 lineaments before the eyes of the civilized world to-night, its 
 doom would be sealed before to-morrow's dawn. Mr. Van 
 Dyke talks about Christian families in the South, in which the 
 slaves are well fed, well clothed, and kindly treated. Suppose 
 it granted-^How many, I ask, of these millions of slaves are 
 in the family of the master, or in any way connected with it ? 
 They toil during the day upon the plantation, under the eye of 
 the overseer or underdriver ; pass the night in cabins more or 
 less comfortable, according to the ability or humanity of the 
 owner, but always separated from the mansion, of course ; they 
 have no more connection with the master's family than his hors- 
 es and mules — not a particle ; and in ninety-nine cases out of 
 a hundred, as little effort is made for their improvement. Talk 
 about families ! — mockery of mockeries ! Wliy, I have seen a 
 slaveholder upon his horse, with his gun in his hand, followed 
 by his dogs, out upon the hunt of a runaway slave ! Fancy a 
 
26 
 
 father pursuing his son or daughter in that style ! I have seen 
 a slave-girl rise from the side of her mistress, and hobble 
 across tlie floor, confined by fetters which clanked like those 
 of a prisoner in his cell, to prevent her from flying to the 
 woods, as slie had formerly done, to escape the infernal tor- 
 tures which that mistress inflicted upon her in outbreaks of 
 passion. A mother might thus treat her daughter, but would 
 it be tolerated ? I have seen the face of a babe six months 
 old streaming with blood, from a cut inflicted by the lash of 
 the whip of an overseer, who, in his reckless haste, had aimed 
 the blow at tlie nurse who held it in her arms ; but I forbear ; 
 and yet Mr. Van Dyke dares to talk about misrepresentation, 
 and asks us to send back the fugitive who is escaping from such 
 service ! 
 
 But let us look for a moment at ordinary slave life sep- 
 arated from these cruelties — I mean separated in imagina- 
 tion — for in reality they never are and can not be — they belong 
 to the system ; if you keep men slaves, you must treat them 
 harshly ; tlie relation is one of wrong inflicted upon the one 
 side and received upon the other ; it never can be harmonious. 
 This is the apology I make for the southern people ; they are 
 no worse than others ; they are not devils incarnate ; the sys- 
 tem makes them what they are, and compels these cruelties ; 
 they know it themselves, and in many instances deplore it. 
 But let us look at this mode of existence apart from this 
 cruelty. Go with me, then, to a Kentucky tobacco plantation. 
 At early dawn you hear the horn of the overseer ; as soon as 
 it is possible to see, men, women, and children of sufficient age 
 ready for work, marcli to the field, and work until breakfast. 
 Breakfast consists of a large piece of corn-bread and fat meat 
 —enough of both— Avith water to drink ; dinner tlie same. I 
 have sat by a poor fellow upon his log as. he ate his unsavory 
 meal ; and when he said to me, " Don't you think we poor ne- 
 groes have a hard time of it?" I felt that that was indeed a 
 hard life ; and as I looked to the blue heavens above, I won- 
 dered that the arm of the Almighty was not extended for their 
 deliverance. Supper in the cabins, with some additions, pro- 
 vided the females are not too much fatigued to prepare it. 
 
27 
 
 Thus passes one weary day after another, in tiresome monotony, 
 varied only by diversity of tasks, or such incidents as may bo 
 supposed to arise from such a life — no hope, no object in view, 
 no stimulus but tlie fear of punishment ; no possibility of improve- 
 ment ; hedged around on all sides by an iron necessity that per- 
 mits no alleviation ; yet, an immortal being, susceptible of all 
 degrees of improvement and happiness, and painfully conscious 
 of the injustice of the dreadful doom that oppresses and crushes 
 him. Such is the life of the unhappy victim of this atrocious 
 tyranny. 
 
 I speak what I have seen, and know whereof I affirm. I have 
 read and listened to the speeches of others, and liave spoken 
 myself, but always with the consciousness of how far short all 
 came of tlie reality. Slavery, to be known, must be seen, not upon 
 the surface, hiU as it is. I have yet to look the candid man in the 
 face who has thus studied it, who will not confess that it is a 
 system of unparalleled atrocity ; that cruelty is the rule, and 
 kindness the exception. Anti-slavery men, however, have never 
 failed to insist that the sin consists in the relation. The self- 
 evident truths of the '' Declaration of Independence," and the 
 teachings of the Bible have formed the great staple of tlieir 
 addresses ; these are the principles which they have attempted 
 to instil into the minds of community ; if poisonous milk, it 
 comes from a source whence such streams have not been gener- 
 ally supposed to flow. 
 
 The misrepresentation and abuse, however, have come from 
 the other side ; the abolitionists have been the best abused men 
 in the country ; their enemies have been well acquainted with 
 the Spanish proverb — throw plenty of dirt, and some of it will 
 stick. Sometimes it has come from dainty hands — pulpit, 
 press, and platform, have vied in the ignoble .strife of coining 
 and applying opprobrious epithets to the men who have led in 
 this conflict. These have been mobbed, hooted, hissed,pelted 
 with unmerchantable eggs, exposed to popular violence, and to 
 every indignity and danger; politically, socially, religiously 
 ostracized ; denounced as Infidels, Socialists, Jacobins, and what- 
 ever else might be considered odious and contemptible. If 
 stung by such envenomed arrows they have sometimes turned 
 upon the foe, and hurled back the charge in words somewhat 
 
expressive, and not always too carefully chosen, who can won- 
 der ? I remember when I was a boy, William Allen, a noble 
 fellow, son of a Presbyterian slaveholding minister of Ala- 
 bama, who had been a student of old Dr. Beecher in Lane 
 Seminary, and who gave up time and wealth for this cause. 
 One morning I observed that his cloak was very much spat- 
 tered with eggs ; I proposed to scrape them off, but he coolly 
 remarked, " that it was no sort of use., as he would only get 
 as many more at the next place ! !" 
 
 Wendell Phillips, the most magnificent orator of the country 
 (Calvinistic in theology, though often denounced as an infidel,) 
 is followed to his home by a hooting, howling mob, his life pro- 
 tected by friends, and the police ; but who disturbs Mr. Van 
 Dyke while uttering his diatribe against abolitionists in Brook- 
 Ijm ? He expends a good deal of superfluous patriotism over 
 a book which he saw in Scotland — whose frontispiece was a 
 picture of a man with a fierce countenance beating a naked 
 woman. Now I can say to Mr. Van Dyke that a member of his 
 own denomination in full communion boasted to me of doing that 
 very- thing ! I can give him name and address, if he desires it. 
 He abuses the American Anti-slavery Society without measure, 
 and then displays his blundering ignorance by asserting that 
 " Its President is a Chief Justice of the State of New Jersey ! !" 
 This will be news to Mr. Garrison ! Who is this chief justice 
 who occupies the honorable position of President of the Ameri- 
 can Anti-slavery Society ? 
 
 He closes this head with these soothing and Christ-like dec- 
 larations, " I believe in the liberty of the press, and in freedom 
 of speech ; but I do not believe that any man has the right be- 
 fore God, or in the eye of civilized law, to speak and publish 
 what he pleases without regard to the consequences. With 
 the conscientious convictions of our fellow-citizens, ncitlier we 
 nor the law have any right to interfere ; but the law ought to 
 protect all men from the utterance of libelous words whose 
 only effect is to create division and strife. I trust and pray, 
 and call upon you to unite with me in the supplication, that 
 God would give abolitionists repentance and a better mind, so 
 that in time to come they may at least propagate their prin- 
 ciples in decent and respectful language ! !" 
 
29 
 
 Here is his third statement, " AboUtionisin" (namely, the be- 
 lief that slavery is morally wrong), '" leads in multitudes of cases, 
 and by a logical process, to utter infidelity.'^ We may safely 
 challenge the world npon this proposition ; it has never been 
 matched. The assertion that the belief that slavery is morally 
 wrong leads by a logical process to ntter infidelity, is too ab- 
 surd to merit a reply, and is worthy of one who could declare 
 as Mr. Van Dyke does, that " When Paul stood upon Mars Hill 
 he was surrounded by ten thousand times as many slaveliolders 
 as there were idols in the city ! !" Athens at this period was 
 crowded with idols beyond the power of computation. The 
 Roman satirist, Petronius, declares that it was easier to find a 
 god in Athens than a man ! but Mr. Van Dyke makes tlie ratio 
 to be ten thousand slaveholders to a single idol. Pausanias, who 
 had some acquaintance with the condition of things, declared 
 that replete as the whole of Greece was with objects of devo- 
 tion, there were more in Athens than in all the rest of the 
 country. This statement would give the city at that time, a 
 population of some hundreds of millions ! To such an extent 
 did they abound, that Pliny declares " that many volumes would 
 but contain something, since no man can speak of the whole." 
 Yet, Mr. Van Dyke says ten thousand slaveholders to every 
 idol ! Poor man, he is so delighted with slaveholders, and his 
 mind has so long dwelt upon them and their divine institution, 
 that he sees them swarming in every direction ! The declaration 
 is important in this connection, inasmuch as it shows that he is 
 no infidel, and by no means afl'cctcd with incredulity. But to 
 return to the proposition, it is absolutely incredible how any 
 man in his senses could have ventured such a monstrous declara- 
 tion. Why, my friends, I do not believe there is a score of 
 you here to-night, however much you may difl'er from me on 
 certain aspects of the question, who believe slavery to be 
 right. Did it ever occur to you, that you were on the broad 
 road to infidelity ? in fact, that you are already suspended over 
 its yawning abyss by a hair, more attenuated than that which 
 held the sword of Damocles ? That the only hope for you is 
 the balm of a pro-slavery gospel, dispensed by the physician of 
 the First Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn ? To make belief in 
 American slavery as a divine institution the punctuni saliens, 
 
30 
 
 the starting point of a life of faith, its denial the gate that 
 leads to utter perdition ; that too, by a minister, exhausts my 
 astonishment. But it is liere, and must be met. Well, then, to 
 go no further back, American abolitionism is tlie daughter of 
 British ; the discussion and accomplishment of West India 
 emancipation originated, to a very great extent, the anti-slavery 
 movement of the United States. Were the abolitionists of 
 Great Britain infidels? Wilberforce, Clarkson, Sharpe, Stephen, 
 Stanley, and all the men of tliat generation, or any part of 
 them, or did they ever become infidels? Did not the churches 
 of Great Britain witli one united voice ultimately concur? and 
 do they not believe with us, and against Mr. Van Dyke and 
 his associates, that slavery is a moral wrong? 
 
 In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-seven an address was 
 prepared and sent by the Protestants of France to the church- 
 es of this country, upon the subject of slavery ; in this address 
 they declare, " With respect to ourselves we feel it incumbent 
 upon us to say publicly, that there is not one partisan of slav- 
 ery among us. There is not among us one single Christian 
 who is able to reconcile with the law of love and holiness the 
 possession of man by man — (they evidently were ignorant of Mr. 
 Van Dyke's husband and wife illustration) — the sale in the 
 market-place of immortal beings, the barbarous rupture of the 
 family tie, tlie suppression of marriage, the inevitable multipli- 
 cation of immoral relations." Nearly six thousand signatures 
 of French Protestants were attached to this address. We have 
 yet to learn that the Protestants of France are infidels. Simi- 
 lar addresses were in preparation in Switzerland and Germany, 
 but whether they were completed and sent, we are not inform- 
 ed. The address of the French found its way into but few of 
 the journals of this country, and the great mass of professing 
 Christians are yet ignorant that such a document is in exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Is our author ignorant that there are in our own land Pres- 
 byterian churches, with a ministry numbering more than seven 
 hundred, and a correspondent membership, who declare slavery 
 a sin against God, and admit no slaveholder to their commu- 
 nion ? Has he forgotten the entire Methodist Church, which, 
 however inconsistent in practice, has never gone so far as to 
 
31 
 
 embody the doctrine of the " immaculate conception" of slavery 
 into their creed, but the opposite? Or the New School Presby- 
 terians, who have never expunged, as tlie Old Scliool have, the 
 early testimony of the Presbyterian Church against slavciy as 
 the crime of man-stealing ? How has he overlooked the great 
 mass of Congregationalists, Wesleyans, the Freewill Baptists, 
 etc., etc. ; all of whom assert its sinfulness, and deny that it has 
 any sanction either in the Old or New Testament ? I do not say 
 that tlicse denominations have done their whole duty, or any 
 thing like it, upon this subject, but they are all included in the 
 definition which he has given of abolitionism — the belief that 
 slavery is morally wrong. I affirm that the man who gives such 
 a definition, and then proceeds to assert that this belief leads by 
 a logical necessity to infidelity, and attempts to prove it, utters 
 a viler slander against the Church of G-od than any infidel of 
 this or any other age has ever mouthed, is himself guilty of 
 infidelity of the very worst and most dangerous character, and 
 that sucli assertions from the mouth of orthodox ministers will 
 do more to produce infidelity than all the harangues of all the 
 infidel conventions that will be held until the days of the Mil- 
 lennium. 
 
 But how does he attempt to establish this gross assertion? 
 " One of its avowed principles," he says, " is that it does not try 
 slavery by the Bible." Out of his own mouth he shall be con- 
 demned. He calls Dr. Wayland an abolitionist. I ask, does he 
 test slavery by the Bible ? He calls Albert Barnes an eminent 
 abolitionist ; does lie test it by scriptural principles? But, for- 
 sooth, these men assert that the matter of the Scripture is to be 
 taken into account in arguing the question of inspiration, and, 
 therefore, are infidels ! Such an impure system as slavery or 
 polygamy, they declare, would be an argument against the Bi- 
 ble as from God, if it was found to sanction such crimes ! This 
 Mr. Yan Dyke pronounces infidelity. Into the question which 
 this declaration involves, I have no time to enter. Mr. Yan 
 Dyke, however, is sworn to the Confession of Faith. He will find 
 the following language in The Larger Catechism, question fourth : 
 " The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, 
 by their majesty and 'purity, by the consent of all the parts and 
 the scope of the whole which is to give all glory to God," etc. 
 
32 
 
 His knowledge of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of class- 
 ical literature, and of bis own clmrcli standards, appears to be 
 equally extensive and profound ! 
 
 Was Judge Jay an abolitionist ? Has Mr. Yan Dyke ever 
 heard of his work upon Hebrew servitude ? Some go so far as 
 to call Dr. Cheever an abolitionist ; has Mr. Van Dyke ever 
 seen his book, God against Slavery ? Has the name of Rev. 
 William Goodell come to his ears in the history of this contro- 
 versy ? Do Reformed Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, 
 Free Presbyterians, etc., test slavery by the Scriptures? A 
 more reckless assertion, based upon a more contemptible quib- 
 ble, was never made ; the plea of ignorance can alone save him 
 from the charge of dishonesty. 
 
 Again : he declares that where abolitionism prevails, infidelity 
 is most rampant. Where abolitionism prevails, the people are 
 also most intelligent ! In New England, to take his own exam- 
 ple. Suppose his charge true, which it is not, let him show the 
 connection. I advise Mr. Van Dyke to benefit his soul by attend- 
 ing the " Boston Anniversaries" next May ; I mean, of course, 
 the religious anniversaries, such as he would approve, not, of 
 course, that of tlie American Anti-Slavery Society, not of the 
 Church -Anti-Slavery Society! Let him look upon the multi- 
 tudes of earnest, intelligent, and conscientious Christians, who 
 throng these assemblies from all parts of New England ; let 
 liim hear the enthusiastic addresses from the representative 
 men of her three thousand ministers ; then let him visit New 
 England where every village has its neat white church well 
 kept and well attended. Taking up his pilgrim staff, let 
 him then traverse certain sections of Virginia, Maryland, 
 North Carolina. South Carolina, etc., visit the old waste 
 places of his own church and of other churches, and then 
 come home and preach upon New England infidelity! He 
 knows, however, or if he does not, I do, for I was born 
 upon the New England hills, that infidelity, so far as it has pre- 
 vailed, has been the child of Unitarianism and Universalism, 
 and has not, in any sense, originated in the anti-slavery enter- 
 prise. Theodore Parker was a Parkerite before he was an ab- 
 olitionist, his theological opinions were in no sense the result^ 
 of his views upon this question, and the very same may be said 
 
33 
 
 of others. But to see tlie absurdity of tliis third statement, 
 compare Massachusetts with South Carolina ! I beg pardon 
 of Massachusetts. Compare then, if you choose, a congrega- 
 tion of those whom Mr. Van Dyke calls infidels, listening to 
 Dr. Channing, or Theodore Parker, developing their system of 
 natural religion, with an audience in Columbia or Charleston, 
 hanging with delight upon the lips of Rev. Mr. Prentiss expa- 
 tiating upon the glories of that benevolent and Divine institu- 
 tion "The Foreign Slave-Trade !" I beg a thousand pardons 
 of the infidels. The infidelity of New England is infinitely in 
 advance of South Carolina orthodoxy. The Southern States of 
 this Union are the great strongholds of Satan's kingdom, the 
 seats of irreligion, impiety, and all wickedness, have breathed 
 the pestilential taint of that moral impurity all over the land, 
 and have done and are doing a thousand-fold more against 
 the cause of Christ than all the infidels that New England has 
 ever produced. Hear the French Protestants once more upon 
 this point : " Are you aware of the language which is addressed 
 to us from all sides ? This is it, ' Protestantism accommodates 
 itself willingly to slavery. In the United States, this odious 
 institution reckons numerous defenders among the Christian 
 bodies. It is preached for, it is prayed for, and for it every effort 
 is made to conquer new territories. And this slavery for which 
 so much is done, is the sale of families in detail, is the rupture of 
 the marriage tie, is the annual prostitution of men, women, and 
 children, selected for this odious purpose from the man-farms of 
 Virginia and Kentucky, is, in a word, a monstrous fact, which is 
 not only revolting to religious minds, but which outrages the first 
 principles of humanity. And American Protestantism accepts 
 this fact ; they find it to agree with the Gospel ; and, doubtless, 
 the Protestants of Europe think as they do, otherwise, they 
 had long ago nttercd a loud cry of grief and reprobation.'" 
 Did not intelligent Protestants in Syria declare, last winter, 
 that the news which came from the United States of the 
 banishment of the free colored people from their homes, of Mr. 
 Fee, and. others, from Kentucky, and of northern men of all 
 classes who were peacefully pursuing their avocations, had 
 done more to injure Protestanism in Syria than all the Jesuits 
 ever sent out by the Propaganda at Rome ? Missionaries in 
 3 
 
34 
 
 all parts of the world declare that they are constantly met 
 with a reference to slavery in the churches of the United States, 
 as an argument against our religion. From all parts of the 
 Christian world comes up a united testimony as to the immense 
 evil which this system is doing the cause of evangelical relig- 
 ion, a testimony which is met by this defender of the faith in 
 Brooklyn, declaring all who will not accept it as divine, and 
 who are laboring for its subversion, to be infidels ! The men 
 whom Swedenborg says he saw in the other world, who were 
 dead and did not know it, were wise in comparison with these 
 defenders of this atrocious wickedness. But, what of those men 
 who have engaged in this enterprise, and come during its progress 
 to deny the inspiration of the Scriptures, and those doctrines 
 which we agree in esteeming fundamental to Christianity ? There 
 are a few such, though I believe you could count them all upon 
 your fingers. I ask, however, what occurred in the great Ref- 
 ormation from Popery ? Did all who abandoned Rome, all who 
 did good service in the cause, become evangelical Christians ? 
 The objection is stolen, Rome has urged it again and again, it 
 is her standing argument against the Reformation. What is 
 the reply ? Not tlie Reformation, but the corrupt system against 
 which the Reformation was a protest, is chargeable with the 
 infidelity. My reply is, not the anti-slavery movement, but a 
 pro-slavery religion, against which it is a tremendous reaction, 
 made these men infidels. From the churches came the strongest 
 opposition, from the pulpits the bitterest denunciations of them 
 and their sacred cause ; this course of treatment produced its 
 natural effect, and in some few instances led to extremes of 
 practice and of language against all religion, which the best 
 friends of the cause deplore, and do not defend. Romanism 
 produced the infidelity of France. German Rationalism is an 
 unclean spirit from the stagnant marshes of a corrupt Protest- 
 antism. The pro-slavery church in this land is the fruitful 
 mother of unbelief. As in the days of Christ, and of Luther, 
 the worst foes of Christianity are those of its own house. Once 
 more I fear within the walls of Zion will the battle of Chris- 
 tianity have to be fought ; but, blessed be God, it will be the 
 last conflict ; the morning cometh, Messiali is on his march ; I 
 hear the thunder of his chariot wheels in the crash of falling 
 
35 
 
 tyrannies, the wail of despotisms, as they sink like the cities of 
 the plain, never to arise. American slavery is doomed, its 
 foundations are heaving, its pillars tremble like those of 
 Dagon's Temple, " with horrible convulsion to and fro," des- 
 tined soon to fall and bury in its ruins pro-slavery churches, 
 and pro-slavery ministers, beneath the remembrance, aye, be- 
 neath the contempt of men. This is my answer to his third 
 proposition. 
 
 The fourth, and last proposition, which our author lays 
 down, is this : " Abolitionism," (the belief that slavery is a 
 sin, morally wrong,) " is the chief cause of the strife that 
 agitates, and the danger that threatens our country." This 
 statement is both true and false, true in a sense which he 
 did not intend, false in the sense in which he wishes it to be 
 understood. Christianity is in earnest, in deadly conflict with 
 all forms of wickedness, with every manner of oppression, a 
 conflict which knows neither truce nor compromise until the 
 battle is fought out and the victory won, until the banner of 
 the cross floats in triumph upon every shore, and " Voices are 
 heard in heaven proclaiming, now is come salvation, the king- 
 doms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and 
 of his Christ." The language of Christianity is, " I will over- 
 turn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he 
 comes whose right it is, and I will give it him." 
 
 It has been the cause of much disturbance for well nigh 
 two thousand years ; it has " set a man at variance against his 
 father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter- 
 in-law against her mother-in-law ;" it has rent families, nations, 
 churches, produced war, bloodshed, famine.*, persecutions, pesti- 
 lences, destroyed art, trade, commerce, manufactures, over- 
 thrown proud cities, and turned fat lands into barrenness. 
 " Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came 
 not to send peace, but a sword." Messiah will smite the nations 
 with the rod of his anger, until they submit, and give that glory 
 to his name which is due. But, who is to blame ? God's mer- 
 ciful and beneficent scheme for the amelioration of the condi- 
 tion of society, and the salvation of men ? Or the wickedness 
 and deccivableness of unrighteousness, which rejects the prof- 
 fered mercy ? Had men not persisted in embracing, and 
 
36 
 
 believing, and promulgating the truth, we would never have 
 heard of the persecutions of the early Christians. Had the 
 Waldenses submitted to that lawful authority which was over 
 them, and succumbed to the prevailing opinions of the world 
 around them, there would have been no bloody slaughter amid 
 those gloomy Alpine fastnesses. We should never have heard 
 that noble outburst in their behalf of the great soul of John 
 Milton. 
 
 " Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, 
 
 • « « 
 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled 
 Mother with infant down the rocks." 
 
 Had there been no Huguenots in France, there would have 
 been no massacre of St. Bartholomew ; the world would have 
 been saved that appalling tragedy. Had there been no Puri- 
 tans in England, the fires of Smithfield never had been kindled ! 
 Had the Covenanters of Scotland been a little more yielding 
 and inclined to compromise, twenty-eight thousand men, women, 
 and children would not have died for the Word of God and the 
 testimony which they held ; there would have been no English, 
 no American Revolution. 
 
 Were there no abolitionists in this country, that is, none 
 who believe slavery a moral wrong, and who are determined to 
 act upon that conviction, we would have neither strife nor 
 agitation at the present time. All this is freely admitted — 
 but what then? Why, then, let us adopt the advice of Messrs. 
 Van Dyke and O'Conor, fold our arms, shut our crazy mouths, 
 or open them only to shout hallelujahs to despotism, and vex 
 the air with our huzzahs for the great Diana of American 
 slavery, and accord to the Dred Scott decision, " that black men 
 have no rights which white men are bound to respect." Let 
 us invite Senator Toombs to Bunker Hill, and wave our hats 
 while he calls the roll of his slaves at the base of the monu- 
 ment, above the ashes of the men who died with the declara- 
 tion of the great Virginian upon their lips, " Give me liberty, 
 or give me death." Let us, in the language of one who should 
 have been called any thing else but Wise, " permit slavery to 
 pour itself out without restraint, and find no limit but the 
 
37 
 
 Western Ocean ;" or, in the more pious but less expressive 
 phraseology of the saintly Palmer, the man to whom the soul 
 of Mr. Van Dyke is knit by the Spirit and Word of God, as 
 the soul of Jonathan to David — grant it the " right, unchal- 
 lenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and 
 nature may carry it." Accepting the advice of this follower 
 of one who came to proclaim deliverance to the captive, and 
 the opening of the prison doors to them that arc bound, repeal 
 our Liberty Bills, until, wherever the stars and stripes are seen 
 to wave, there shall be no hiding-place for the flying fugitives ; 
 put into our Creeds and Confessions of Faith, as the first 
 fundamental principle of all true religion, the doctrine that 
 slavery is right ; and denounce, as the most damnable of all 
 damnable heresies, the belief that it is sinful and morally 
 wrong ; lay the very foundations of our churches upon the 
 crushed and bruised body of the slave, and cement them with his 
 blood ; declare every church not founded upon this rock, and not 
 adorned with a slaveholding ministry and membership a mere 
 conclave of fanatics, and not worth a farthing candle. Then will 
 the souls of those eminent evangelists of slavery and disunion, 
 Drs. Thornwell and Palmer, be made to sing for joy, and the 
 hope of evangelizing the world (the North included) once more 
 dart its cheering beams into the darkness of their present de- 
 sponding and discouraged condition. That delectable commu- 
 nity which they call South Carolina will return to tlie fold 
 from which she has wandered, bringing those evangelists 
 of the slave-trade. Dr. McYicars and Kev. Mr. Prentiss, 
 with her ; agitation will cease, quiet will be restored, and 
 peace will plant her olive upon the hills ; King Cotton will 
 ascend the throne from which he has been cast down ; our 
 northern summers will be made bright by visits from our south- 
 ern friends, and their bands of happy slaves ; our winters less 
 cheerless by the hope of their return. Surely, we are all ready 1 
 Who could refuse such requests from pious lips, with the prom- 
 ise of such blessings ? 
 
 Slavery, I affirm, is the cause of the strife that agitates and 
 the danger that threatens our country ; this every Avise man 
 knows, and every candid man confesses to be true. The strife 
 will cease, the danger will be averted when the last' fetter has 
 
38 
 
 fallen from the last slave, and liberty proclaimed througliout 
 all the laud to all the inhabitants thereof, and not till then. 
 Build your house upon the shifting sand, and hope that, when 
 the rains descend, and the storm beats, and the floods come, it 
 will not fall. Make your home upon the slopes of Yesuvius, 
 and expect that it will not be rocked by the earthquake, or 
 swept by the fiery flood, when it rolls from its burning crest ; 
 but do not expect that a nation can have peace wliich enslaves 
 men ; that a kingdom will stand which violates God's law ; 
 that a people can prosper who spoil the poor and oppress the 
 stranger ; that you can avert the wrath of Heaven with ser- 
 mons against abolitionism, or turn back the arm of the Al- 
 mighty when it is stretched out, with prayers in whicli there is 
 no confession of the guilt, or promise of repentance toward 
 God ; or that your compromises and exhortations to peace will 
 avail, when Jehovah rides forth upon the whirlwind, when 
 " the Lord thunders in the heavens, and the Highest gives his 
 voice, hailstones and coals of fire." 
 
 But has slavery been the meek and quiet lamb during these 
 years which its apologists would have us believe ? They would 
 make one think that the terrible lion of anti-slavery had stood 
 with his tremendous paw upon its neck, with open jaws, blood- 
 red tongue, glaring eyes, and erect mane ready at any moment 
 to slay and devour, while the meek creature did nothing but 
 bleat out piteous supplications for life ! I afiirm that slavery 
 has been the aggressive power, and that slaveholders have ac- 
 complished by their own madness what abolitionists, without 
 their assistance, would have failed to affect. There is a painful 
 misrepresentation of facts throughout Mr. Van Dyke's discourse 
 which we must in kindness conclude is the result of a pitiable 
 ignorance of the history of events. I can conceive how a man 
 who had read nothing but the Herald, or the Observer, or some of 
 their echoes, might reach such conclusions as those stated under 
 this fourth head, but I can not conceive how a man abreast of 
 the times, or having any tolerable acquaintance with the history 
 of the last twenty years, could make such statements — I affirm 
 that slavery has been the aggressor, and that the victory has 
 generally been upon that side. In proof of this I appeal — 
 
 To the speeches of all the leading men of the South, from 
 
39 
 
 Calhoun to WigTall in Congress, and npon the hustings, to tho 
 tone of lier influential press with which, thanks to the honesty 
 and candor of the " Anti-Slavery Standard," we are pretty fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 To the imprisonment by South Carolina, of free citizens 
 of Massachusetts guilty of no crime but a colored skin, their 
 selling into slavery to pay their jail fees, and banishment from 
 the State of the legal gentleman, Mr. Hoar, who had proceeded 
 thither for the purpose of endeavoring to obtain justice for them 
 by an appeal to the courts. 
 
 To the admission of Texas into the Union, and the conse- 
 quent war with Mexico, in which life and treasure were lavislily 
 expended in order to add additional slave territory to our al- 
 ready too mucli extended domain. 
 
 To the enactment of that infamous Fugitive Slave Law whicli 
 affixes the severest penalties to obedience to God's law, and the 
 plainest dictates of humanity, and visits with heavy punishments 
 the performance of a duty which ninety-nine out of every hund- 
 red will discharge, the law to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 To the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, a measure pro- 
 posed by Douglas, then a pliant, now a cast-off, tool of the Slave 
 Oligarchy, and carried by southern votes — votes of the very 
 men now talking about sacred compacts, and that too when not 
 a single compact wliich the North has ever made has been, or 
 is proposed to be violated. 
 
 To the attempted assassination of Charles Sumner, " the 
 noblest Roman of them all," upon the floor of the Senate 
 Chamber, by southern bullies. 
 
 To the atrocious Dred Scott decision, making slavery national, 
 and freedom local ; capping the climax of all judicial iniquity 
 by the declaration that black men never were, are not, and 
 can not be citizens, and have no rights which white men are 
 bound to respect. 
 
 To the terrible scenes enacted upon the plains of Kansas un- 
 til it was as though the seven plagues of Egypt had been 
 mingled with the seven vials of apocalyptic wrath, and poured 
 out upon that unhappy territory. 
 
 To the banishment of free people, white and colored, from 
 Southern States, together with the whippings, hangings, and 
 
40 
 
 burnings which have so aroused the northern mind during the 
 past year. 
 
 In fine, to the whole history of the conflict in which this des- 
 potic power has been attempting to seize the Government and 
 control it for the accomplishment of its own infernal designs. 
 
 This is my answer to the charges, arguments, statements, 
 and perversions of this remarkable discourse, a discourse which 
 marks the lowest point that the northern pulpit has ever 
 reached. Yet I rejoice that it has been preached. It will open 
 blind eyes, and carry its own refutation where my words can 
 never reach. Moreover, I am relieved at the thought that we 
 have touched bottom — there is surely no lower deep. I do not ex- 
 pect to hear the slave-trade advocated, even by Mr. Van Dyke — 
 at any rate not in Brooklyn ; as to what he would do in Charles- 
 ton, I am not so positive ; however this may be, from this point 
 we must certainly ascend — remain stationary we can not. 
 
 But, I am asked, what is my remedy for present evils ? Wlien 
 a man who has maimed himself in an attempt to take his own 
 life, asks me what I am going to do about it? my reply will 
 be, I exceedingly regret your folly and wickedness, but must 
 decline assuming any responsibility for the act, while declaring 
 my readiness to do all in my power to benefit and relieve him. 
 
 My remedy is, to stand firm, refuse all compromise, do our 
 whole duty, think, speak, act, just as at other times, and leave 
 the men who make the trouble to furnish the remedy ; timidity, 
 not firmness, has been the curse of every great and good cause 
 in which it has been permitted to enter. 
 
 Be patient, forbearing, forgiving, kind, this is Christ-like, is 
 divine ; seek the best interests — the highest good — of all ; but do 
 not swerve a hair's breadth from the path of duty, for the sake 
 of averting evils which, like the stone of Sisyphus, must ever- 
 more return to plague and molest us. 
 
 As Nelson said at Trafalgar, " England expects every man to 
 do her duty." This is the hour in which God and Liberty expect 
 every man to do his duty, assured that, as always under the 
 Divine guidance and protection, the path of duty will be found 
 to be the path of safety. Amen. 
 
.O" 
 
 4 
 
 ' ' * A*^ 
 
 
'An* 
 
 • ■ ' 
 
 
 >->■ 
 
 WERT 
 
 BOOKBINDINJC 
 Cranrville Pa