son, that while such occasions signify little to the
latter, to the former they are pregnant with good--raising their
drooping spirits, cheering their desponding hearts, inspiring them with
life, and hope, and joy. The rich and the poor thus meeting joyfully
together, can not but mutually contribute to each other's benefit; the
rich will be led to moderation, sobriety, and circumspection, and the
poor to industry, providence, and contentment. The recompense must be
rich and sure.

A most beautiful and instructive commentary on the text in which these
things are taught, the Savior furnished in his own conduct. He freely
mingled with those who were reduced to the very bottom of society. At
the tables of the outcasts of society, he did not hesitate to be a
cheerful guest, surrounded by publicans and sinners. And when flouted
and reproached by smooth and lofty ecclesiastics, as an ultraist and
leveler, he explained and justified himself by observing, that he had
only done what his office demanded. It was his to seek the lost, to heal
the sick, to pity the wretched;--in a word, to bestow just such benefits
as the various necessities of mankind made appropriate and welcome. In
his great heart, there was room enough for those who had been excluded
from the sympathy of little souls. In its spirit and design, the gospel
overlooked none--least of all, the outcasts of a selfish world.

Can slavery, however modified, be consistent with such a gospel?--a
gospel which requires us, even amidst the highest forms of social life,
to exert ourselves to raise the depressed by giving our warmest
sympathies to those who have the smallest share in the favor of
the world?

Those who are in "bonds" are set before us as deserving an especial
remembrance. Their claims upon us are described as a modification of the
Golden Rule--as one of the many forms to which its obligations are
reducible. To them we are to extend the same affectionate regard as we
would covet for ourselves, if the chains upon their limbs were fastened
upon ours. To the benefits of this precept, the enslaved have a natural
claim of the greatest strength. The wrongs they suffer, spring from a
persecution which can hardly be surpassed in malignancy. Their birth and
complexion are the occasion of the insults and injuries which they can
neither endure nor escape. It is for the _work of God_, and not them own
deserts, that they are loaded with chains. _This is persecution._

Can