a slave is itself so grievous, as
to call for compassion towards those who bear it. Now, if this relation
were to be classed with the approved relations of life, why should the
Apostle have undertaken to awaken compassion for persons, simply because
they were the subject, of it? He never asked for sympathy for persons,
simply because they were parties to the relations of husband and wife,
parent and child. It may be worthy of notice, that the injunction under
consideration is found in Paul's letter to the Jewish Christians. This
attempt to awaken pity in behalf of the slave, and to produce abhorrence
of slavery, was made upon these, and not upon the Gentile Christians;
because, perhaps, that they, who had always possessed the Oracles of
God, could bear it; and they who had just come up out of the mire of
heathenism, could not. If this explanation be just, it enforces my
argument for ascribing to causes, other than the alleged sinfulness of
the institution, the Apostle's omission to utter specific rebukes of
slavery.

5th. Another reason for believing that the slavery modification of
servitude should not be classed with the confessedly proper relations
with which you class it, is the conclusive one, that it interferes with,
and tends to subvert, and does actually subvert, these relations. The
Apostles prescribe duties, which are necessary to sustain these
relations, and make them fruitful sources of happiness to the parties to
them. Among these duties are the following: "Wives, submit yourselves to
your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord"--"Children, obey your
parents"--"Husbands, dwell with them" (your wives). But slavery, where
it does not make obedience to these commands utterly impossible,
conditions it on the permission of usurpers, who have presumed to step
between the laws of God and those on whom they are intended to bear.
Slavery, not the law of God, practically determines whether husbands
shall dwell with their wives: and an amount of anguish, which God alone
can compute, testifies that slavery has thus determined, times without
number, that husbands shall not dwell with their wives. A distinguished
gentleman, who has been much at the South, is spending a little time in
my family. He told me but this day, that he had frequently known the air
filled with shrieks of anguish for a whole mile around the spot, where,
under the hammer of the auctioneer, the members of a family were
undergoing an endless separati