Christian morality, or are their teachers to be hanged? This is the alternative. We all remember that it was made a charge against Mr. Smith that he had read an inflammatory chapter of the Bible to his congregation! Excellent encouragement for their future teachers 'to declare unto them,' according to the expression of an old divine, far too Methodistical to be considered as an authority in the West Indies, 'the whole counsel of God!'” —p. 7. Nor is there more hope that we can agree with the master on the most important questions of morality than that we can teach the slave. "The people of the West Indies seem to labor under an utter ignorance of the light in which their system is altogether viewed in England. When West Indian magistrates apply the term ' wretch' to a Negro who is put to death for having failed in an attempt at resistance, the people of England do not consider him as a wretch,' but as a good and gallant man, dying in the best of causes, the resistance to oppression, by which themselves hold all the good that they enjoy. They consider him as a soldier fallen in the advance-guard of that combat, which is only kept from themselves, because somebody else is exposed to it further off. If the murdered Negro is a 'wretch,' then an Englishman is a wretch' for not bowing his head to slavery whenever it invites him. The same reason that makes the white Englishman's resistance virtuous and honorable, makes the black one's too; it is only a regiment with different facings, fighting in the same Will these men never know the ground on which they stand? Can nothing make them find out, that the universal British people would stand by, and cheer on their dusky brethren to the assault, if it was not for the solitary hope that the end may be obtained more effectually by other means? It is not true that the people of England believe that any set of men, here or any where, can, by any act of theirs, alter the nature of slavery, or make that not robbery which was robbery before. They can make it robbery accord_ ing to law the more is the pity that the power of law cause. VOL. II. - 33 making should be in such hands; but this is the only inference. All moral respect for such laws — all submission of the mind, as to a rule which it is desirable to obey and honorable to support- is as much out of the question, as if a freebooter were to lay down a scale of punishment for those who should be found guilty of having lifted a hand against his power.” p. 35. Our only method of teaching morality to master and slave is by removing the obstacles in the way of those truths which must be learned by all, some time or other, in this world or the next. We must show the masters that they are culprits, and the slaves that they are men. We must lighten the burden which weighs down the soul yet more than the body: we must loosen the chains which confine the limbs, before we can induce the captive to cast, off the fetters, as substantial, though intangible, which bind down the intellect and the affections. The spirit cannot escape from its thraldom till the death-warrant of slavery be not only signed, but executed. And how far does it rest with us to effect this? What power have we to assist in this righteous work? We have the power conferred by a swelling heart and a willing spirit to quicken other minds, and to bring them into sympathy with our own. We have power to relate facts to those who know them not; to keep alive the interest of those who do; to spread our own convictions while we strengthen them; and, from the centre of influence, in which all, even the least influential, are placed, to send out to the remotest points where we can act, tidings from the land of freedom, and threatenings of the downfall of oppression. We have inquired of the oracles of truth, and we know that this abode of the idolatrous worship of Mammon shall be yielded up. It may not be ours to go forth to the fight, or to mount the breach; but having patiently compassed its extent for the appointed time, we may raise our voices in the general 387 shout before which its bulwarks shall fall, and its strength be for ever overthrown. ON WITCHCRAFT.* IT has pleased Providence to make mankind subject to various ills as well as blessings, and to render their happiness dependent on the right application of the means adapted to temper joy and sorrow. Men have ever been liable to pains of body and weaknesses of mind, and irksome pressure from external circumstances, and also to intemperate enjoyment of sensible pleasures, and of undue excitement of certain faculties of the mind. A counteracting power has, at the same time, been furnished in the influences of religion; a power adequate to lighten all burdens, to soothe all pains, to temper all pleasures, to stimulate to action, and to restrain excess, to equalize the lot, and ennoble the character. This auxiliary of all good, and antidote of all evil, is evidently designed to be made use of by each individual according to his needs. The time will come when every man that is born into the world will recognise, and lay hold of, and apply his religion for himself; when no one will be needed to stand between God and himself, and no human teaching will be made the medium of divine. But that time has never yet been, nor will be, till Christian nations have learned enough of Christianity to give to their brethren, without distinction, not only their inheritance of bread, but of the word of God. All God's children have an equal right, not only to the means of bodily, but those of spiritual life; and till such an equalization shall have been effected as shall bestow on every breathing man leisure for the exercise and cultivation of his immortal facul * Lectures on Witchcraft, comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem, in 1692. By Charles W. Upham, jun., Pastor of the first Church in Salem. Boston, U. S. 1831. ties, no community may boast itself of its Christianity. That the dispensing of its benefits has hitherto been committed to a separate class, is a sure sign that its influences are yet mutable; as the sealing up of the granaries of Egypt was an intimation of probable dearth. If our faith were what it ought to be, the livelong summer of the spirit, there would be no more occasion to garner up its privileges in a priesthood, than there would have been for Joseph to withdraw a portion of the plentiful harvests, while he knew that every season would produce its own abundance for ever. Hitherto we have distrusted the promise that seed-time and harvest shall not cease; we have not even tried what the sunshine and dews of heaven can do towards ripening the moral harvest. We have kept the people out of the field, which is theirs as much as ours, and placed them at the mercy of stewards who hold their office by arbitrary appointment. And how have the priesthoods of the earth discharged their functions? We admit the credentials of one such class, which, however, was absorbed into the mass nearly eighteen centuries ago; but, except the Jewish, what priesthood has shown by its influence that it was divine in its origin? Professing to stand between heaven and earth, have they brought down truth from the hand of the God of truth? Have they been the dispensers of peace from the God of love? Have they watched from their elevated position for the approach of freedom, and given the signal to the world below them to prepare its triumph? Have they directed the tendencies of man to high objects, and employed his energies aright, as it was their part to do if they were indeed the privileged agents of Providence? O, no! look through the records of society thus far, and it will be found that priests have flattered the vices, and taken advantage of the weaknesses of their disciples; that they have fomented strife, and hindered freedom, and, above all, kept back or polluted God's own truth. This, which is notoriously true of all pagan priesthoods, is not less so, in varying degrees, of all which have called themselves Christian. It is no new thing to complain of the Romish church government; but was there ever a Protestant priesthood which was not worldly, cowardly, and deceitful? Is there much to choose between the ministry of the English church, or the Scotch church, or the Presbyterian, or any other ecclesiastical government? Is not the history of pious fraud (the worst kind of fraud) to be found complete in the ecclesiastical annals of every incorporated religious class? And are we not warranted from this to infer, that the principle of incorporation is as wrong in respect of religion as of any other profession? This principle brings about its disas trous results with equal effect, through whatever means it operates, whether through the licentiousness of the Romish clergy, or the policy of the English, or the bigotry of the Scotch; whether through the fanaticism of the Puritans of a former age, or the worldliness of the Presbyterians of the present. It cannot but issue in these results, notwithstanding all the virtuous efforts of the pious and disinterested who have been found in all these bodies. No individual exertions, or testimony, or sacrifices in favor of truth, can be of more than temporary and partial avail, while principles are countenanced which afford temptations and impunity to fraud. All established ministries offer this temptation and impunity, whether the object be the selfish pursuit of temporal advantage, or the fancied promotion of the cause of religion. It is difficult to measure the comparative guilt of these two objects. It is difficult to make a choice between the Sadducees and the Pharisees; but it is easy to pronounce on the positive guilt of both, and to declare that if there be crime in the worldliness of Romish policy, and in the licentiousness of Romish monachism, there is also crime in Methodist revivals, and in the pretended exercise of holy gifts in a metropolitan chapel, no |