"Why, bless your soul, sir, this yer lot's worth ten thousand dollars!" said the trader, who was not prepared for so close a practical application.
Do not be too sure, friend, that the trader is peculiar in this. The very same argument, though less frankly stated, holds in the bonds of Satan many extremely well-bred, refined, respectable men, who would gladly save their souls if they could afford the luxury.
"My friend," said father Dickson, using the words of a very close and uncompromising preacher of old, "what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
"I know that," said the trader, doubtfully; "but it's a very hard case, this. I'll think about it, though. But there's father Bonnie wants to buy Nance. It would be a pity to disappoint him. But I'll think it over."
Father Dickson returned to the camp-ground between one and two o'clock at night, and, putting away his horse, took his way to the ministers' tent. Here he found father Bonnie standing out in the moonlight. He had been asleep within the tent; but it is to be confessed that the interior of a crowded tent on a camp-ground is anything but favorable to repose. He therefore came out into the fresh air, and was there when father Dickson came back to enter the tent.
"Well, brother, where have you been so late?" said father Bonnie.
"I have been looking for a few sheep in the wilderness, whom everybody neglects," said father Dickson. And then, in a tone tremulous from agitation, he related to him the scene he had just witnessed.
"Do you see," he said, "brother, what iniquities you are countenancing? Now, here, right next to our camp, a slave-coffle encamped! Men and women, guilty of no crime, driven in fetters through our land, shaming us in the sight of every Christian nation! What horrible, abominable iniquities are these poor traders tempted to commit! What perfect hells are the great trading-houses, where men, women, and children are made merchandise of, and where no light of the Gospel ever enters! And when this poor trader is convicted of sin, and wants to enter into the kingdom, you stand there to apologize for his sins! Brother Bonnie, I much fear you are the stumbling block over which souls will stumble into hell. I don't think you believe your argument from the Old Testament, yourself. You must see that it has no kind of relation to such kind of slavery as we have in this country. There's an awful Scripture which saith: 'He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?'"
The earnestness with which father Dickson spoke, combined with the reverence commonly entertained for his piety, gave great force to his words. The reader will not therefore wonder to hear that father Bonnie, impulsive and easily moved as he was, wept at the account, and was moved by the exhortation. Nor will he be surprised to learn that, two weeks after, father Bonnie drove a brisk bargain with the same trader for three new hands.