Various

“ We believe, that the progress of public opinion in reference to slavery, is very rapid; and we are quite sure, that it cannot be accelerated by any interference, which our southern brethren would regard as an invasion of their political rights, or as an impeachment of their Christian character.
Most earnestly praying that the Father of Lights will illuminate our path, and guide us all to the adoption of such measures as shall advance His glory, and secure the temporal and eternal happiness of all men, we are, dear brethren, your affectionate fellow-servants. ”

“ Slaves, who have regarded labour as an irksome task, can have little idea of liberty, except as an exemption from toil. To liberate them, without some arrangement for their subsistence, would produce starvation, or impel them to acts of lawless violence. Emancipation must, therefore, as those friends of the slaves contend, be gradual and prospective. The British Parliament have not decreed an immediate emancipation, in the West Indies; thus recognizing the principle, that the slaves must be prepared for freedom by moral and intellectual culture. ”

“ Since then, from the character of our political institutions, the emancipation of the slaves is impossible, except with the free consent of the masters; it is necessary to approach them with calm and affectionate argument. They claim to be better acquainted with the real condition and the true interests of the negro, than other persons can be. Multitudes among them freely acknowledge and lament the evils of slavery, and earnestly desire their removal, in some way consistent with the welfare of the slave himself, and with the safety of the whites. ”

“ When, however, we witness the comparatively rare occurrence of an individual, surrounded with almost every description of temptation to stifle conviction, and, by his silence at least, to perpetuate a corruption in the Christian church, which for ages has been protected by legislative authority, popular favour, and implicit faith, not only nobly triumphing over every inducement to compromise the interests of truth by refusing to surrender himself to its acknowledged claims, but venturing forth, and assailing error in its most splendid fastness, and pursuing it to its final retreat ”

“ But the imagination, that the application of the ordinance of baptism to unconscious infants is a divinely appointed medium of grace to them, is so incompatible with real facts, that a philanthropic Christian, who looks around, and has his heart affected by the real state of society, even in this country, if he could at that moment be brought closely to reconsider this opinion, which, at other moments, when facts are forgotten, raise delightful feelings in his mind, could not but have his eyes open to the fallacy:—the illusion would vanish at once. ”

“ May we be found much in that excellent duty of self-examination.” And at a subsequent date she writes in her diary, “My hearing is in some measure restored; of which I can give no account from natural causes or medicinal art. O Lord, my healer, thou canst do every thing. O the riches of immortal grace! If I outlive my senses, I cannot outlive my graces. O how beautiful, how honourable, how durable! I earnestly plead with God for his church and ministers, in faith and hope, for what I am not likely to live to see. Dear Lord, let me depart and join the holy society above. ”

“ I am made for eternity, for everlasting life and happiness; therefore, let me study that; mind that end beyond inferior ends. Why do men seek wealth, but to be happy? Why pleasures, why honours, but because they would be happy? If these things cannot bless and enhappy me, why should I burn daylight? why should I not off them, as the bee gets off the plants that yield her no honey, and once, at last, see where my happiness lies, in pursuing happiness, and where my happiness lies, in God’s ways ”

“ At Torrington, our brother Pulsford still continues to carry on the work of the Lord with the true spirit of a laborious minister of the word, ever zealous in the work, and watching for the salvation of souls; and the great Head of the church has again honoured him with the reward of his labours. Possessed with heartfelt love for souls, he appears to have continually before him, as his motto, ‘Work while it is day; for the night cometh in which no man can work;’ he is instant in season and out of season. ”

“ The condition of the Chinese women is thus described by the missionary Gutzlaff:—“Such a general degradation in religion makes it almost impossible that females should have their proper rank in society. They are the slaves and concubines of their masters, live and die in ignorance, and every effort to raise themselves above the rank assigned them, is regarded as impious arrogance. As long as mothers are not the instructors of their children, and wives are not the companions of their husbands, the regeneration of this great empire will proceed very slowly.” ”

“ The Legislatures of the respective States cannot interfere with the legislation of each other. In some of the States, where laws forbidding emancipation exist, the minority cannot, if disposed, give freedom to their slaves. You perceive, then, that the National Government, and the people of the Northern States, have no power, nor right, to adopt any direct measures, in reference to the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern States. The slave-holders themselves are the only men who can act definitively on this subject ”

“ O Lord, when I look around me, and feel I am bereaved of human joys, and behold the ravages which thou hast made among my dear, beloved friends and kindred in the flesh, I am astonished at the strength of that depravity, which leads me still to cling to this dying world. ”

“ They have also no more right to use the argument drawn from the baptism of households, than they have that drawn from circumcision: they are both founded on the same principle—an assumption that the doors of the Christian visible church have been opened by our Lord himself to the unconscious and unconverted, in diametrical opposition to the principles on which they found their opposition to the established church. Surely it cannot be, that wise master-builders should much longer employ themselves in daubing this papal wall with untempered mortar. ”

“ It is some time since the Christian public has heard of any measure intended to be proposed to the Legislature in reference to [Pg 12] the violation of the Sabbath, and it is time, as it appears to me, that those who have such a measure at heart should be awake, and setting about their great work in earnest. Whether the measure of which Sir Andrew Agnew gave notice in the last session, be the same as his last bill or not, is at present unknown; but I trust, if it be not the same, it will be founded on the same principle, and equally comprehensive in its provisions. ”

“ In the space of a few months how many have perished under the stroke of death! Young and old, rich and poor, small and great, have gone down to the grave, where “they rest together, and the servant is free from his master.” ”

“ And if they offer themselves to this work of the Lord, will not the Christian women of this country, by sending them forth, and supporting them in their work, show to the continent and the world, that gratitude to God and to Christ for the blessings of providence and grace, can kindle in their hearts an earnest and self-denying pity for those who, though they speak in other tongues, and are separated from us by half the earth’s circumference, are yet as capable of joy and sorrow as ourselves, and are among those to whom our Redeemer has commanded that the gospel should be preached? ”

“ It is not believed by many of the sincere friends of the slaves, that their immediate emancipation would be conducive to their own real welfare, or consistent with the safety of the whites. To let them loose, without any provision for the young, the feeble, and the aged, would be inhuman cruelty. ”

“ And if infants grow up, believe, and are baptized, is it conceivable that their heavenly lot will be at all worse than that of those who were baptized in their infancy; or that, if they die unbaptized, without any fault of their own, they will in any wise suffer for the omission? Now if all these questions be answered in the negative, as undoubtedly they must, what becomes of the imaginary paradise of blessings and privileges to which baptism is to introduce the millions of our infants? ”

“ The purpose for which the world was created, and made the theatre of such mysterious and benevolent transactions, will be accomplished; the reign of grace, in the salvation of men, will terminate; the influences of the Holy Spirit in their regeneration will be no longer necessary; the preaching of the gospel, as the ordained means of conversion, shall for ever cease. ”

“ We have still between three and four hundred children in attendance at our Sabbath-school, and the library I brought out with me is in extensive circulation. Every thing in connexion with our work appears prospering to an unexampled degree. God is indeed doing great things for us, whereof we are glad. What a change has been effected, also, on the moral aspect of society! ”

“ It is the most fair and honest mode of dealing, on the part of those who are of opinion that the exigency of the case calls for a comprehensive measure, to declare at once what is the utmost extent of the objects they have in view, and what is the exact amount of the measure with which they would be satisfied; and it is considered that such a course is the most likely to attract the approbation and good opinion of right-thinking individuals, and, which is an infinitely higher consideration, to draw down the blessing of Almighty God. ”

“ Some persons among them, it is true, are not convinced that slavery is wrong in principle; just as many good men in England, half a century since, believed the slave-trade to be just and right. Such individuals must be convinced, before they will act.
In the next place, the number and character of the slaves form an appalling difficulty. ”

“ We are in the Lord’s hands, and he will finally accomplish the purposes of his own glory, and I am persuaded we cannot do better than steadily to pursue the purpose in which we are engaged, to make the people acquainted, as far as it is in our power, with the Holy Scriptures, which will undermine the power of Antichrist, and promote happiness in proportion as they obtain an access to the heart. ”

“ But what do facts declare! What spiritual advantages do baptized children discover themselves to be possessed of which unbaptized children do not possess, in cases where all other things are equal! Surely all fair Christian observers of the dispensations of the King of grace in his church, must be constrained to allow that the advantages are undiscernible, and therefore can have no existence.”
There is still another passage in this sensible and truly Christian letter, which we must be allowed to present to our readers. ”

“ Those members of the Legislature who would exhibit hostility to the bill to the extent of rejecting it altogether, would doubtless exhibit hostility to any portion of its provisions if brought forward as a distinct bill; because hostility to the whole of a measure acknowledged in some part to be good and necessary, must arise from an evil principle. There is much difference between hostility to the whole of the bill, and opposition to some, nay, even the majority, of its provisions. Those who would be hostile to the whole of the bill, must necessarily be so to any detached part ”

“ It may assist you to form a more correct opinion of the whole subject, if we allude to a few of the circumstances which make slavery, in this country, a matter of peculiar difficulty, and which, consequently, require those who would promote the real welfare of the coloured race, to act with great caution.
In the first place, the political organization of the United States is widely different from that of England; and this difference makes it impossible to adopt here a course similar to that which the British Parliament have adopted in reference to slavery in the West Indies. ”

“ Christian women, who feel that you can lend to society its charm, and receive from it a loyal courtesy in return; protected, honoured, and loved—impart your blessings to those who are miserable because they are without them. ”

“ The members of the church, retaining their veneration for the notions respecting the sacraments established as catholic in the primitive ages, have some specious ground of hope that the administration of the ordinance to their infants will be accompanied with a communication of grace, in consequence of the imagined occult connexion between the ‘elements’ and the grace of the ordinance, they have, with something like a pretence of reason, expected that their children might thereby be made members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ Nothing is wanting to obtain this, but the hearty co-operation of all our churches in the great work—the entering into religion with all the heart, and all the soul, each [Pg 29] one laying himself or herself out for God, and the eternal welfare of their fellow-creatures. We have four Sunday-schools, in which 280 children are taught the word and way of God, and we trust will yield a future harvest to the church.’”
the bishop of london and the dissenters. ”

“ Then all mankind, that have lived from the beginning of the world, will enter on a state of endless and unchangeable existence: some, in the presence of God, will enjoy the most exquisite pleasures, and obtain “an eternal weight of glory;” ”