forcibly divested of his plunder, and so situated, that he can steal no more. Just such will be the coerced honesty of every slaveholding professor of religion, who pertinaciously refuses to emancipate his slaves, until resistless authority, in some mode, hinders him from longer grasping the produce of their toil, and their most precious and sacred rights." Now then, brethren, to your duty. Every thing claims that you immediately “efface that blot of our holy religion," slavery, from the church. Banish all the pleas of expediency, and substitute gospel honesty. Cast away "the fear of man, which bringeth a snare," and put your trust in the Lord; then shall you be safe. Enjoin upon the slaveholders, within a short definite period, to emancipate their slaves; or, if they refuse, assure them that they shall be excluded from the church. Put not off to the uncertain future your present obligations. Half a generation has passed away since the General Assembly met in 1818; hundreds of thousands of slaves have accused us before the throne of God; and tens of thousands of christian men-stealers have already answered for the "hardships, injuries, and evils, in their worst degree and form, which their inhumanity and avarice suggested and inflicted!" Remember Lot's wife! She lingered, and loved Sodom in preference to the word of God, and yet remains an awful monument of that procrastination which cries, "To-morrow !"-while God thunders in our hearing, "TO-DAY!” New York, April 16, 1833. PRESBYTER. |