Literature is coming to the rescue of the slave, and even now is pleading his cause with astonishing power in all the languages of christendom.
Christianity is on the side of the slave, and its true spirit is beginning to be practically applied.
Thousands of devout persons are found day and night pleading with God for the speedy deliverance of the captive.
But a voice from heaven is heard saying, “Hope thou in God.” God is on the side of the oppressed. He will never abandon them. He approves their cause, hears their cries, and is interested in all their movements. Those millions of colored Americans are now in the fiery furnace, but He will bring them out. From their house of bondage they will come forth, and accomplish a glorious mission on the earth. God has reserved for them some of the grandest achievements in music, poetry, science, arts, morals, freedom and religion. Never has he permitted a people to be more deeply humbled, and none will in the end be more highly exalted. God’s ways are not as our ways. He can make the wrath of man to praise him.
The day of deliverance is not distant. God is stirring up the nations. The slavery question is agitating the whole enlightened world. It cannot be put to rest. Politicians pronounce it dead and solemnly bury it, but it rises before the third day and confronts them in every assembly. Church councils resolve to let it alone, but it will not let them alone. They hate agitation, and cry for peace, but are answered, “first pure, then peaceable.”
God of liberty! hasten the hour when the reddening East shall authorize the joyful announcement to American bondsmen—“the morning cometh.” Till then let us “TOIL AND TRUST.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Elliott on Slavery, p. 40.
[2] R. Walsh, Encyclopedia Americana, Art. Slavery.
[3] Here are a few advertisements taken from respectable southern papers, verbatim.