IV. There is a noticeable contrast between Northern and Southern ideas of Religion.
We believe God's revealed word to contain the influence appointed for the regeneration and full development of every human being, and that it is to be employed as God's universal stimulant to the human soul, as air and light are the universal stimulants of vegetation.
We preach it to arouse the whole soul; we preach it to fire the intellect, and give it wings by which to compass knowledge; we preach it to touch every feeling with refinement, to soften rudeness and enrich affections; we build the family with it; we sanctify love, and purge out lust; we polish every relation of life; we inspire a cheerful industry and whet the edge of enterprise, and then limit them by the bonds of justice and by the moderation of a faith which looks into the future and the eternal. We teach each man that he is a child of God; that he is personally one for whom the Savior died; we teach him that he is known and spoken of in heaven, his name called; that angels are sent out upon his path to guard and to educate him; we swell within him to the uttermost every aspiration, catching the first flame of youth and feeding it, until the whole heart glows like an altar, and the soul is a temple bright within, and sweet, by the incense-smoke and aspiring flame of perpetual offerings and divine sacrifices. We have never done with him. We lead him from the cradle to boyhood; we take him then into manhood, and guide him through all its passes; we console him in age, and then stand, as he dies, to prophesy the coming heaven, until the fading eye flashes again, and the unhearing ear is full again; for from the other side ministers of grace are coming, and he beholds them, and sounds on earth and sights are not so much lost as swallowed up in the glory and the melody of the heavenly joy!
Now tell me whether there is any preaching of the Gospel to the slave, or whether there can be, and he yet remain a slave? We preach the Gospel to arouse men, they to subdue them; we to awaken, they to soothe; we to inspire self-reliance, they submission; we to drive them forward in growth, they to repress and prune down growth; we to convert them into men, they to make them content to be beasts of burden!
Is this all that the Gospel has? When credulous ministers assure us that slaves have the means of grace, do they mean that they have such teaching as we have? Or that there is any such ideal in preaching? The power of religion with us is employed to set men on their feet; to make them fertile, self-sustaining, noble, virtuous, strong, and to build up society of men, each one of whom is large, strong, capacious of room, and filled with versatile powers.
Religion with them does no such thing. It doth the reverse.
With them it is Herod casting men into prison. With us it is the angel, appearing to lead them out of prison and set them free! In short religion with us is emancipation and liberty; with them it is bondage and contentment.
It is very plain that while nominally republican institutions exist in both the North and South, they are animated by a very different spirit, and used for a different purpose. In the North, they aim at the welfare of the whole people; in the South they are the instruments by which a few control the many. In the North, they tend toward Democracy; in the South, toward Oligarchy.
It is equally plain that while there may be a union between Northern and Southern States, it is external, or commercial, and not internal and vital, springing from common ideas, common ends, and common sympathies. It is a union of merchants and politicians and not of the people.
Had these opposite and discordant systems been left separate to work out each its own results, there would have been but little danger of collision or contest.