responsible for our souls." This unconcern for their spiritual interests
grew very naturally out of their relation to their masters; and were the
relation ordained of God, the unconcern would, surely, be both
philosophical and sinless.

God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is
guilty of assuming absolute power--of assuming God's place and relation
towards his fellow-men. Were the master, in every case, a wise and good
man--as wise and good as is consistent with this wicked and
heaven-daring assumption on his part--the condition of the slave would
it is true, be far more tolerable, than it now is. But even then, we
should protest as strongly as ever against slavery; for it would still
be guilty of its essential wickedness of robbing a man of his right to
himself, and of robbing God of His right to him, and of putting these
stolen rights into the hand of an erring mortal. Nay, if angels were
constituted slaveholders, our objection to the relation would remain
undiminished; since there would still be the same robbery of which we
now complain.

But you will say, that I have overlooked the servitude in which the Jews
held strangers and foreigners; and that it is on this, more than any
other, that you rely for your justification of slavery. I will say
nothing now of this servitude; but before I close this communication, I
will give my reasons for believing, that whatever was its nature, even
if it were compulsory, it cannot be fairly pleaded in justification of
slavery.

After you shall have allowed, as you will allow, that slavery, as it
exists, is at war with God, you will be likely to say, that the fault is
not in the theory of it; but in the practical departure from that
theory; that it is not the system, but the practice under it, which is
at war with God. Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not
with any theory of it. But to indulge you, we will look at the system of
slavery, as it is presented to us, in the laws of the slave States; and
what do we find here? Why, that the system is as bad as the practice
under it. Here we find the most diabolical devices to keep millions of
human beings in a state of heathenism--in the deepest ignorance and most
loathsome pollution. But you will tell me, that I do not look far enough
to find the true theory of slavery; and that the cruelties and
abominations, which the laws of the slave States have ingrafted on this
theory, are not acknowled