It is now a momentous question: To what ends shall this renovated instrumentality of prayer, in the hands of a revived church, and of a multitude of young converts, who owe their hopes to it, be applied? Against what forms of sin and evil shall this weapon be wielded? What embodiment of wrong most invites this species of attack, by its opposition to everything vital in godliness? Is it not American slavery? We assuredly gather that it is God’s will there should be a special and combined effort in prayer, to pull down this stronghold of iniquity. We have confidence that the Holy Ghost, who has given the saints a fresh baptism of prayer, will incline them to unite their supplications against this abomination.
Christian reader! Will you not bear this burden to your closet? Will you not make the bondman’s wrongs your own? Christian parents! Will you not mingle with your thanksgivings that your children were born free, importunate supplications that the curse of slavery may be removed from every family in the land? Young converts! Ye who, in answer to prayer, have been liberated from the bonds of sin, will you not plead with God to deliver the oppressed, and to abolish slavery? Ministers of Christ! Will you not call upon the Lord, “praying with all prayer and supplication in the spirit,” and leading the sacramental host to the throne of grace? Are there Christian households, and Christian sanctuaries in this land, where the oppressed have not been habitually remembered in prayer? Are there disciples who have not sympathized with the sighing bondmen? Are there “women professing godliness” who have been deaf to the wail of slave mothers sundered from their babes? Let these things be no longer, lest the cry of the down-trodden millions call down swift retributions. May the spirit of grace and of supplications be poured out upon Zion, until liberty shall be proclaimed throughout all this land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. So God grant for his Son’s sake!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The following is a decision of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Kentucky Reports, p. 644. Judge Shannon—“Slaves, although they are human beings, are, by our laws, placed on the same footing with living property of the brute creation. However deeply it may be regretted, or whether it be politic or impolitic, a slave by our code is not treated as a person, but (negotium,) a thing, as he stood in the civil code of the Roman Empire.”
FROM A SERMON BY REV. E. N. KIRK, D. D.
In addition to the reasons urging to prayer for the extinction of slavery growing out of the character of the system, and the condition of the oppressed, there are other reasons derived from its influence upon the slave owners.
Of these there are three classes: the unwilling master—the willing, but kind master—and the oppressor.
1. I know of no condition so full of trials as that of the slave-owner who abhors the relation, but does not see that he can properly terminate it. That there are many such can not be doubted. But what a life must a godly man lead who has come to comprehend its enormous wickedness! What must be his apprehensions of the wrath of God upon his people, his country! If a man of skeptical views, like Jefferson, could tremble for his country in remembering that heaven is just, what must he feel who fully believes that God is ruler among the nations, and that he hates oppression! How painful must be his unavailing sympathy for the poor oppressed beings whom he sees around him! How must his heart be burdened as he observes the demoralizing influences of slavery on both races; how often must his love of country be pained with that just contempt which slaveholding in America excites in every civilized nation under heaven; how painful must it be to see no relief in any quarter, but, on the contrary, everything indicating that the system is to be incorporated into the whole civil and social system of the nation! And to crown all, while many intelligent persons at the South would gladly abandon slavery, no man has the courage to utter his sentiments.
This class of slave-owners demands our deepest and most compassionate sympathy.