nature, capable of the highest development and the most refined
culture. A conscience tender and acute, the voice of God in his soul
bidding him to choose the right and avoid the wrong, is his lawful
inheritance bestowed upon him by his Heavenly Father. This no one can
deny who knows aught of the love of moral truth manifested by the
slaves of this country. God has not left the slaves without moral
sense. Nor has he denied him the spiritual faculty which, when
cultivated, enables him to recognize God in his spiritual
manifestations, to discern and appreciate spiritual truths, and to
feel and relish the gentle distillations of the spirit of divine love
as they fall upon his heart like dew upon the grateful earth. The
moral and spiritual nature of the slave, however, like his
intellectual, goes uneducated and untrained. Deep, dark, and
impenetrable is the gloom which enshrouds the mind and soul of the
slave. No ray of light cheers him in his midnight darkness. No one is
allowed to fetch him the blessings of education, and no preacher of
righteousness is suffered to illumine his dark mind by the
presentation of sacred truth.

It is indeed true that slavery is a political, a civil, and a
commercial evil. It is true that it is most excruciating and frightful
in its effects upon the physical nature of its victim. But slavery is
seen in its more awful wickedness and terrible heinousness, when we
contemplate the vast waste of intellect, the vast waste of moral and
spiritual energy, which has been caused by its poisonous touch.

And yet the power of the State, and the influence of the Church, are
given to its support. Many of our leading statesmen are engaged in
devising and furthering plans for the extension of its territorial
area, thereby hoping to perpetuate and eternize its bloody existence,
while the majority of our most distinguished divines find employment
in constructing discourses, founded upon perverse expositions of
sacred writ, calculated to establish and fix in the minds of the
people the impression that slavery is a divine institution.

Although this mighty power of the State, and influence of the Church,
be opposed to the slave, let him not despair, but be full of hope. For
God is upon his side, truth is upon his side, and a multitude of good
and able men and women are engaged in working out his redemption.

[Illustration: (signature) J. Mercer Langston]

OBERLIN, August 27, 1853.

The Bible vs. Sla