y life, I had given up all
thoughts of my profession. I had hitherto but seldom exercised it, and
then only to oblige some friend. I doubted, too, at the first view of
the thing, whether the pulpit ought to be made an engine for political
purposes, though I could not but consider the Slave Trade as a mass of
crimes, and therefore the effort to get rid of it as a Christian duty. I
had an idea, too, that sacred matters should not be entered upon without
due consideration, nor prosecuted in a hasty, but in a decorous and
solemn manner. I saw besides that, as it was then two o'clock in the
afternoon, and this sermon was to be forthcoming the next day, there was
not sufficient time to compose it properly. All these difficulties I
suggested to my new friends without any reserve. But nothing that I
could urge would satisfy them. They would not hear of a refusal, and I
was obliged to give my consent, though I was not reconciled to the
measure.

When I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to
my place; for notice had been publicly given, though I knew nothing of
it, that such a discourse would be delivered. I was surprised, also, to
find a great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit. There
might be forty or fifty of them. The text that I took, as the best to be
found in such a hurry, was the following:--"Thou shalt not oppress a
stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt."

I took an opportunity of showing, from these words, that Moses, in
endeavouring to promote among the children of Israel a tender
disposition towards those unfortunate strangers who had come under their
dominion, reminded them of their own state when strangers in Egypt, as
one of the most forcible arguments which could be used on such an
occasion. For they could not have forgotten that the Egyptians "had made
them serve with rigour; that they had made their lives bitter with hard
bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the
field; and that all the service, wherein they made them serve, was with
rigour." The argument, therefore, of Moses was simply this:--"Ye knew
well, when ye were strangers in Egypt, the nature of your own feelings.
Were you not made miserable by your debased situation there? But if so,
you must be sensible that the stranger, who has the same heart, or the
same feelings with yourselves, must experience similar suffering, if
treated i