grace are coming, and he beholds them, and sounds on earth and sights
are not so much lost as swallowed up in the glory and the melody of
the heavenly joy!

Now tell me whether there is any preaching of the Gospel to the slave,
or whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the
Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to
soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them
forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to
convert them into men, they to make them content to be beasts of
burden!

Is this _all_ that the Gospel has? When credulous ministers assure us
that slaves have the means of grace, do they mean that they have such
teaching as _we_ have? Or that there is any such _ideal_ in preaching?
The power of religion with us is employed to set men on their feet; to
make them fertile, self-sustaining, noble, virtuous, strong, and to
build up society of men, each one of whom is large, strong, capacious
of room, and filled with versatile powers.

Religion with them does no such thing. It doth the reverse.

With them it is Herod casting men into prison. With us it is the
angel, appearing to lead them out of prison and set them free! In
short religion with us is emancipation and liberty; with them it is
bondage and contentment.

It is very plain that while nominally republican institutions exist in
both the North and South, they are animated by a very different
spirit, and used for a different purpose. In the North, they aim at
the welfare of the whole people; in the South they are the instruments
by which a few control the many. In the North, they tend toward
Democracy; in the South, toward Oligarchy.

It is equally plain that while there may be a union between Northern
and Southern States, it is external, or commercial, and not internal
and vital, springing from common ideas, common ends, and common
sympathies. It is a union of merchants and politicians and not of the
people.

Had these opposite and discordant systems been left separate to work
out each its own results, there would have been but little danger of
collision or contest.

But they are politically united. They come together into one Congress.
There these antagonistic principles, which creep with subtle influence
through the very veins of their respective States, break out into open
collision upon every question of national policy. And, since the world
began, a republican spiri