e world than ever, and that the
slave trade is far more extensive and monstrous than it was when
Clarkson raised his voice against its extinction; that is a fact
which, if the men who now take the lead in warring on the evil
were truly great men, it would silence in them every other
feeling than that of its enormity, and the godlike resolve that
all hands and all hearts should be raised before Heaven and
united in its spirit to chase this spreading villainy from the
earth speedily and forever. But men, however benevolent, can not
be great men if they are bigots. Bigots are like the peasants who
build their cabins in the mighty palaces of the ancient Caesars.
The Caesars who raised the past fabrics are gone, and the power in
which they raised them is gone with them. Poor and little men
raise their huts within those august palace walls, and fancy
themselves the inhabitants of the palaces themselves. So in the
mighty fane of Christianity, bigots and sectarians are
continually rearing their little cabins of sects and parties, and
would fain persuade us, while they fill their own narrow
tenements, that they fill the glorious greatness of Christianity
itself!

It is surely high time that after eighteen hundred years of
Christ's reign we should be prepared to allow each other to hold
an opinion on the most important of all subjects to ourselves! It
is surely time that we opened our eyes sufficiently to see what
is so plain in the Gospel: the sublime difference between the
Spirit of Christ and the spirit of His disciples when they fain
would have made a bigot of Him. "We saw men doing miracles in thy
name; and we forbade them." "Forbid them not, for they who are
not against us are for us." It is not by _doctrines_ that Christ
said His disciples should be known, but by their fruits; and by
the greatest of all fruits--love.

You, dear friend, and those noble women to whom I address myself
when addressing you, have shown in your own country the grand
Christian testimonial of love to mankind in the highest degree.
You have put your lives in your hands for the sake of man's
freedom from caste, color, and mammon; and the greatest disgrace
that has of late years befallen this country is, that you have
been refused admittance as delegates to the Conven