It is indeed true that slavery is a political, a civil, and a commercial evil. It is true that it is most excruciating and frightful in its effects upon the physical nature of its victim. But slavery is seen in its more awful wickedness and terrible heinousness, when we contemplate the vast waste of intellect, the vast waste of moral and spiritual energy, which has been caused by its poisonous touch.
And yet the power of the State, and the influence of the Church, are given to its support. Many of our leading statesmen are engaged in devising and furthering plans for the extension of its territorial area, thereby hoping to perpetuate and eternize its bloody existence, while the majority of our most distinguished divines find employment in constructing discourses, founded upon perverse expositions of sacred writ, calculated to establish and fix in the minds of the people the impression that slavery is a divine institution.
Although this mighty power of the State, and influence of the Church, be opposed to the slave, let him not despair, but be full of hope. For God is upon his side, truth is upon his side, and a multitude of good and able men and women are engaged in working out his redemption.
(signature) J. Mercer Langston
Oberlin, August 27, 1853.
The Bible vs. Slavery.
"Nothing," says Dr. Spring, "is more plain to my mind than that the word of God recognizes the relation between master and slave as one of the established institutions of the age; and, that while it addresses slaves as Christian men, and Christian men as slaveholders, it so modifies the whole system of slavery as to give a death-blow to all its abuses, and breathes such a spirit, that in the same proportion in which its principles are imbibed, the yoke of bondage will melt away, all its abuses cease, and every form of human oppression will be unknown. The Bible is no agitator. It changes human governments only as it changes the human character. It aims at transforming the dispositions and hearts of men, and diffusing through all human institutions the supreme love of God, and the impartial love of man."