Prayer for the oppressed

No. 38.
A PREMIUM TRACT. BY REV. JAMES A. THOME, CLEVELAND, OHIO.
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, BOSTON.
There is a deep and growing conviction in the minds of the mass of mankind, that slavery violates the great laws of our nature; that it is contrary to the dictates of humanity; that it is essentially unjust, oppressive, and cruel; that it invades the rights of liberty with which the Author of our being has endowed all human beings; and that in all the forms in which it has ever existed, it has been impossible to guard it from what its friends and advocates would call abuses of the system. It is a violation of the first sentiments expressed in our Declaration of Independence, and on which our fathers founded the vindication of their own conduct in an appeal to arms. It is at war with all that a man claims for himself, and for his own children; and it is opposed to all the struggles of mankind, in all ages, for freedom. The claims of humanity plead against it. The struggles for freedom every where in our world condemn it. The instinctive feeling in every man’s own bosom, in regard to himself, is a condemnation of it. The noblest deeds of valor and of patriotism in our own land, and in all lands where men have struggled for freedom, are a condemnation of the system. All that is noble in man is opposed to it; all that is base, oppressive, and cruel, pleads for it.
The spirit of the New Testament is against slavery, and the principles of the New Testament, if fairly applied, would abolish it. In the New Testament no man is commanded to purchase and own a slave; no man is commended as adding any thing to the evidences of his Christian character, or as performing the appropriate duty of a Christian, for owning one. Nowhere in the New Testament is the institution referred to as a good one, or as a desirable one. It is commonly—indeed, it is almost universally—conceded that the proper application of the principles of the New Testament would abolish slavery every where, or that in the state of things which will exist when the Gospel shall be fairly applied to all the relations of life, slavery will not be found among those relations.