the commencement of American independence, and continued their faithful exertions until this time, there would have been no occasion in our day for that disagreeable distinction in the American republic, of free states and slave states.

Secondly. There is a time which calls forth the honest exertions of an ambassador of Christ, in dealing with the minds and consciences of men, more loudly than any other season; that is, when a slaveholder is about to take his departure from time, and appear before the tribunal of God, when a minister is called upon to visit such a person, in that solemn crisis, his indispensable duty is to deal honestly with him, and like a skilful physician to probe his wounds to the bottom; he ought to treat him with the same heroic boldness as Eli did Ahab, or that prophet who faithfully reproved king Ama for his gross idolatry. With peculiar energy he ought to lay before him the unparalleled aggravation of the crime of slaveholding, his absolute need of faith, repentance, and reformation, without which he cannot expect to enter the kingdom of God. That instead of departing out of time, by entailing unmerited, hereditary bondage upon his neighbors, he is bound by the law and the prophets to love them as himself, and show forth his love by setting them at liberty. He may lay before him the vast extent of the Divine law, its spirituality and holiness, and direct him to compare these with his own heart and life, and in particular his keeping his fellow creatures in bondage, without giving them what is just and equal according to their labor, together with the other evils which are necessarily attached to slavery, but especially to show him the inconceivable wretchedness that soul must experience in the eternal world, that has departed this life with not only the aggravations of guilt, which are common to human life, but in the commission of a crime, which grants a charter to his own posterity to continue in the perpetration of the same to the end of the world, while it entails bondage and wretchedness upon the present generation of slaves, and also upon their posterity to the end of time. He may show them that if transient acts of wickedness will subject a sinner to the vengeance of hell-fire, how inconceivably dreadful must the condition be of that man, who in his expiring moments, commits a

crime that lives in its effects and actual operation, by an arithmetical progression with his own posterity to the day of judgment, and in its bitter consequences upon the slaves to the same period. He may show him also that the sin of ratifying those dreadful entailments has one peculiar trait, which will prodigiously augment its criminality, that is the easy and ready way of getting rid of both the sin and the punishment which is the insertion of one item in his last will that will liberate all his slaves; this itself cuts off the possibility of hereditary sinning from his own posterity to the end of the world, and hereditary bondage from the blacks to the end of the world.

Sin committed is liable to be more or less aggravating in proportion to the easiness of the opposite duty required, as well as by the enormity of the effects liable to be produced by the sin. And that man who is faithfully instructed and made acquainted with the easiness of performing a duty of so high importance as that of liberating his slaves, and thereby preventing his own posterity from a course of hereditary sinning, and the slaves from hereditary misery, and will deliberately leave the world with those shocking entailments upon both, ought to go into perdition; neither can any ordinary berth in that region of despair, be adapted to his enormous guilt.

With what peculiar emphasis then, might the poet have applied these lines to the future condition of a slaveholder:

Unheard of tortures are reserved for such :

These herd together, the common damn'd shun their society. Looking on themselves as fiends less foul.

BLAIR.

SOLILOQUY FOR A DYING SLAVEHOLDER.

I am now in a little time to appear in the presence of the great God, to give an account of all the actions of my life, and to be rewarded according to my works. If my works are those of faith in the merits of Christ, for my justification, and for my deliverance from the habit and practice of sin, and if I love God and my neighbor as myself, I shall receive a crown of glory as a reward of grace. But if I am found by the great Judge, to be wanting in faith and love to God, and of that love to my neigh. bor which would lead me to do for him what I would that

he should do to me, I may expect, in a short time, to lift mine eyes in hell. All my black people are my neighbors; I must dispose of them in some form, that will be liable to fix their destiny in this world, after I shall have begun to experience the realities of eternity. I must either set them at liberty, or else rivet the chains of hereditary slavery upon them. How shall I dispose of them in a way conformable to that precept-"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"? I am in a great strait; my mind, now on the brink of eternity, reels to and fro. If I depart this life with any one prevailing lust unmortified, I must perish for ever; for the divine word shews that except I cut off right-hand sins, and pluck out right-eye sins, I cannot enter the kingdom of God.

A very weighty business now lies before me. Whether I shall, in my last will, leave those my domestics bond or free. Leaving them bound will empower my own posterity to retain them in bondage for ever; this will imply a charter to all generations, to be doing either good or evil; one of the two it must be. These blacks must also be subject to hereditary slavery with its complicated horrors to the end of time, and these miseries must be extended to all branches of their posterity, though they should amount to millions.

Their gross ignorance will be liable to prevent them from a knowledge of the gospel, and obstruct their salvation. If I should set them at liberty it would tend to unlock the bars of ignorance, which lie in their way to happiness, both temporal and eternal, and cut off all the miseries of slavery from them and their posterity for ever. But should I set them at liberty, it may, in a measure, reduce my widow and fatherless children to want. When I take a serious view of the station I at this moment occupy in the moral world, I tremble at myself. My responsibility to God relative to my slaves, is truly awful. I now possess a power above the control of all men, by one act, to prevent my own posterity, to the end of the world, from enslaving them and their children. By the same act I can secure liberty to these slaves and their posterity for ever, and therewith prevent all the miseries of slavery. All these wonderful effects, which are of infinite importance,

I can instantly accomplish by having one item inserted in my last will, to liberate the slaves I now possess, and this will secure freedom to all their succeeding generations; on the contrary, I possess a power, independent of all men, to give to my posterity a charter to continue them in slavery, with all its horrors, to the end of time. I can, without being accountable to men, decide this great and important cause as I will; yet in whatever way I determine the matter, I must be accountable to God for it. Let me summon all my deliberative faculties in this portentous crisis, and come to a final determination. Can I now appeal to God, with all the solemnity of an oath, as I shall in a few hours answer to him, that I believe it to be my indispensable duty to rivet the chains of unmerited hereditary slavery, with all its concomitant miseries, upon these my fellow creatures and neighbors, to the end of time, and empower my children, and their children's children, to be executors of that deed. And can I, in consequence of this important transaction, look forward with a well grounded hope of receiving a gracious congratulation relative to this deed-" Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord ?" I cannot ; it is impossible. Let me then commit my wife and children to the care and protection of a merciful God, who has promised to be the orphan's stay, and the widow's judge; for it is better for them to fall into the hands of the Lord, than into the hands of slaves. I will now, while in the land of the living and place of repentance, set them all at liberty, and at once open a way for the deliverance of them and their posterity from ignorance and wretchedness, to the end of the world, and prevent my own posterity, for ever, from exercising tyranny over them: so help me God.

The affecting scene of a dying slaveholder, bequeathing his estate to his heirs, is so well represented by a judicious writer on the subject of slavery, that we shall transcribe his statement verbatim. To see a man, (a Christian,) in the most serious part of his life, making his last will and testament, and in the most solemn manner addressing the judge of all the earth-"In the name of God, Amen."

Hearken to him; he certainly must be in earnest.

He

is closing all his concerns here below. He will very shortly appear before the Judge, where kings and slaves will have equal thrones.

He proceeds-

Item. I give and bequeath to my son negro man, named

with five of her young children.

a negro woman, named

also a negro woman with her three children.

Item. I give and bequeath to my daughter

a negro man, named named

Item. All my other slaves, whether men, women, or children, with all my stock of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, I direct to be sold to the highest bidder, and the monies arising therefrom, (after paying my just debts,) to be equally divided between my two above named children.

Suppose, for a moment, that the testator, or if the owner dies intestate, (which is often the case,) was ever so humane a person, who can vouch for his heirs and successors? This consideration, if nothing else, ought to make all slaveholders take heed what they do, for they must give 'an account of themselves to God. BARROW.

CHAPTER XII.

PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT.

The reader will perceive that the present work is not a sermon; yet, as the general subject is of a most serious nature, so as deeply to concern the eternal states of men, it may not be amiss to conclude with a practical improve

ment.

I. From what has been said of the real character of a slaveholder-how his authority over his slaves contravenes the authority of God's law relative to the slaves, and intercepts and prevents all relative duties between husbands and wives, parents and children, and turns the entire system of obedience due from the slaves, both to God and man, into a channel of honor and profit to himself—it appears that SLAVEHOLDER, considered as a term expressive of his station, office, and usurped authority, is a name of