r conversation. The Gospel, as it subdues
and softens the human heart, will make the relationship of involuntary
servitude everywhere to be after this pattern. Instead of exciting
hatred and jealousy, and provoking war between the whites and blacks, I
am for bringing all the influences of the Gospel to bear upon the hearts
of the white population, to convert them into such masters as God
enjoined the Hebrews to be, and such as the Apostle to the Gentiles
enjoined upon Gentile slave-holders as their models. And I am filled
with sorrow and astonishment as I see some of the very best and most
beloved men among us at the North withholding missionaries and tracts
from the Southern country, and--as Gustavus's aunt said some of these
do--calling it 'standing up for Jesus!'

"Now," said I, "if such were the injunctions of the Most High as to the
manner in which the Hebrews should treat their Hebrew slaves, it is easy
to see that such a habit with regard to them would serve greatly to
mitigate the sorrows of bondage on the part of Gentile slaves. And thus
the curse of slavery, like sin, and even death, is made, under the
influences of religion, a means of improvement, a source of blessing.
Let but the sun shine on a pile of cloud, and what folds of beauty and
deep banks of snowy whiteness does it set forth, and, at the close of
day, all the exquisite tints which make the artist despair are flung
profusely upon that mass of vapor which but for the sun were a heap of
sable cloud.

"The minister," said I, "who, Hattie tells us, classed 'Abraham the
slave-holder' with the 'murderer,' and the 'liar and swearer,' knew not
what he did. People who laugh and titter at the 'patriarchal
institution,' need to peruse the laws of Moses again, with a spirit akin
to their beautiful tone; and those who say that to hold a fellow-man as
property is 'sin,' are not 'wiser than Daniel,' but they make themselves
wiser than God.

"All who sustain the relationship of owner to a human being," said I,
"do well to read these injunctions of the Most High, as very many of
them do, applying them to themselves. And it is also profitable to read
how that a violation of these very slave-laws was, in after years, one
great cause of the divine wrath upon the Hebrews. You will find, in the
thirty-fourth of Jeremiah, that, not content with having Gentile slaves,
the Hebrews violated the law requiring them to release each his Hebrew
slaves once in seven years.