[97] of his immediate duty in respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of that class who, according to ‘Evangelicus,’ have ‘no personal acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political connections of their Southern fellow-citizens.’ We look upon it only as another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine displeasure. There is a grave-stone coldness about it. The author manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra. No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb, chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the grave of Lazarus
Wept, and forgot His power to save;no outburst of that indignant reproof with which the Divine Master rebuked the devourers of widows' houses and the oppressors of the poor is called forth by the writer's stoical contemplation of the tyranny of his ‘Christian brethren’ at the South. ‘It is not necessary,’ says Evangelicus, ‘to inquire whether the New Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution.’ And this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery, including within itself a violation of every command uttered
