of unmerited suspicion of religious
teachers, and thus opening a door to their more extensive labors and
usefulness--by furnishing a greater portion of time for the service
of the negro, and thus preventing the continuance of unavoidable
Sabbath desecrations, in labor and neglect of the means of
grace--and in its operation as a stimulus to proprietors and other
influential gentlemen, to encourage religious education, and the
wide dissemination of the Scriptures, as an incentive to industry
and good order.

2. That while the above statements are true with reference to all
the islands, even where the system of apprenticeship prevails, they
are especially applicable to Antigua, where the results of the great
measure, of entire freedom, so humanely and judiciously granted by
the legislature, cannot be contemplated without the most devout
thanks givings to Almighty God.

3. That we regard with much gratification, the great diminution
among all classes in these islands, of the most unchristian
prejudice of color the total absence of it in the government and
ordinances of the churches of God, with which we are connected, and
the prospect of its complete removal, by the abolition of slavery,
by the increased diffusion of general knowledge, and of that
religion which teaches to "honor _all_ men," and to love our
neighbor as ourselves.

4. That we cannot but contemplate with much humiliation and
distress, the existence, among professing Christians in America, of
this partial, unseemly, and unchristian system of _caste_, so
distinctly prohibited in the word of God, and so utterly
irreconcileable with Christian charity.

5. That regarding slavery as a most unjustifiable infringement of
the rational and inalienable rights of men, and in its moral
consequences, (from our own personal observation as well as other
sources,) as one of the greatest curses with which the great
Governor of the nations ever suffered this world to be blighted: we
cannot but deeply regret the connection which so intimately exists
between the various churches of Christ in the United States of
America, and this unchristian system. With much sorrow do we learn
that the _principle_ of the lawfulness of slavery has been defended
by some who are ministers of Christ, that so large a proportion of
that body in A