tion, or actually engage in a system which includes every practicable iniquity? Can you conscientiously believe, that a slave-holder exhibits that assimilation to the meek and lowly Jesus, which is indispensable to an enjoyment of the inheritance of the saints in light? Are you prepared to answer all the demands, which equity may propound at the final examination of the last great day, when the enormities of slavery are weighed in the balance of the Judge? If so, persevere-but if not-be alarmed, and instantaneously desist from all participation in this ungodliness. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry. Pluck out the right eye, cut off the right hand, and amputate the right foot; though thy slaves be equally precious as these necessary corporeal members; Emancipate them. It is more profitable to thee, to pass through life in penury and scorn, and at death, to enter the paradise of the blessed, than to enjoy all earthly good, and at thy mortal dissolution, to be plunged into the abyss of wo-where their worm dieth not-and the fire is not quenched.

A SHORT SERMON TO PREACHING MEN

STEALERS.

The subject of our discourse is recorded by the Prophet Zechariah, chapter 11, verses 4 and 5. "Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter, whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty; and they who slay them say, blessed be the Lord, for I am rich; and their own shepherds pity them not."

As hardened sinners are not fond of long sermons, especially when they are conscious of their truth and application to themselves, I shall proceed without any introduction into the very marrow of the subject.

I. We have the character and condition of the American coloured citizens exactly described; they are "the flock of the slaughter." Because, 1. Coloured people are not accounted as human beings. 2. They are treated in all re

spects as if they were an inferior order of cattle to horses and dogs, except as they can augment wealth and luxury, and minister to sensuality. 3. It is considered the greatest insult in the world, among the unfeeling and hardened slave torturers to take any notice of a gentleman's killing a slave. They are a body of two-legged animals, only kept to be starved or worked to death, or to be killed by toil, or torture, or outrage, or violation.

II. The conduct of American slave-holders is plainly declared, "Whose persecutors slay them and hold themselves not guilty; and they who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich."

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1. They are engaged in a most ungodly traffic, like the people of old, who are condemned by the other prophets. Joel 3; 3. They have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they may drink." This is the constant practice among slaveholders. Amos 2; 6-8. "Thus saith the Lord; they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; that pant after the dust of the earth upon the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek; and the man and his father go in unto the same maid to profane my holy name." These are the constant practices of almost all slave-holders.

2. They mix impiety with their wickedness. They become rich by their man-stealing and man-selling, and then pretend hypocritically to thank the Lord that He has bless ed them in their most felonious mode to obtain opulence. This is true of all slaveholders; they accumulate wealth by continuous robbery; and yet many of them profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, who went about doing good, the prince of philanthropists, and the godlike liberator. Our text, therefore, teaches us, that all profession of the Christian religion by such slaveholders, is impious hypocrisy.

3. The slaveholders are as cruel as they are corrupt and deceitful, for they slay the flock. The work of murderous death is always going on in the slaveholding_districts, either more suddenly or with lingering tortures. No earthly

record is kept of the human bloodshed and of the human lives sacrificed to the relentless demon of slavery. The Lord holds the catalogue, and at the head and foot of the direful scroll, is the dreadful indictment written with American and Christian blood, “Their possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty!" They are not only robbers, hypocrites and murderers, but practical atheists, who commit the most nefarious crimes, and yet plead not guilty. Thus they despise the law of God, and maintain, notwithstanding all their superlative wickedness, that they are innocent. They virtually deny all morality, and discard the divine government of the world. They abrogate all religion, and even adduce the name of God and their hypocritical profession of divine truth as a sanction for their inordinate depravity. This is the character, in different degrees, of all the slaveholders who curse the church and the world.

III. The conduct of the pretended shepherds in reference to slaves; that is, of American preachers in the southern states is pungently denounced, 'Their own shepherds pity them not.' It is one of the most extraordinary principles of slavery, that ministers of the gospel, so called, of nearly all denominations who reside in slaveholding regions, are slaveholders, who will" sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes." It is self-evident, that the preachers have no pity for slaves; they neither comfort them, nor plead for them nor instruct them; and all attempts to teach them by oral doctrine only, is no better than solemn mockery. Like the Papists, they will not permit the coloured citizen to learn to read or to possess the scriptures; and all the knowledge which they acquire by a white preacher's discourses is both deceptive and insulting. No man dare to preach the whole gospel south of the Potomac and the Ohio.

In no aspect does the appalling and atrocious criminality of man-stealing develop its merciless and destructive horrors with more repugnance to intelligent Christians, than in the daring impiety with which it tyrannises over the understanding and consciences of men, and in that profound ignorance in which it imprisons all its victims. If no other cause for its extirpation could be alleged, that total destitu

tion of all moral and religious instruction, which ever marks its impious and detestable supremacy, should consign it to the deepest execration.

This is the hallowed ground, on which Christian philanthropists can securely stand and combat, and defy all the envenomed arrows and " fiery darts of the wicked." The claims of Jehovah are always imperative and ever obligatory that we should "send out the light and the truth" among "the people who sit in darkness." This duty especially belongs to all preachers of the gospel. Their peculiar office, their solemn vows, and their inconceivable responsibilities all urge upon them the inflexible discharge of this high and momentous service; and yet no class of persons in society, not even the Jesuit priests, who minister in the idolatrous temples of that " Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, Babylon the great," more resolutely endeavour to obscure the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, and to extinguish the candle of the gospel, than American preaching slave-drivers.

Every preacher in the southern states, almost without exception, in reference to the dissemination of the pure truths of divine revelation in all their amplitude, is living in an obdurate and unceasing violation of the solemn vows which he made, and of the important duties which he voluntarily assumed when he was inducted into the office of the Christian ministry. His base neglect of the divine requirements comprises two heinous sins, and involves the most perilous and fearful consequences to immortal souls, both in this life and in that which is to come.

All the dead and all the living preachers, who have ever resided among the slavites, and who have maintained the silence of "" a deaf and dumb spirit" upon the subject of slavery, are distinctly chargeable with these two unspeakably aggravated transgressions.

1. They have not only directly approved or connived at "sinners of the first rank," but with few exceptions, they themselves have actually been guilty of " the highest kind of theft." To these pretended "prophets that prophesy lies, prophets of the deceit of their own hearts," who carry human blood on their skirts, and who have the price of

souls in their pockets," may justly be applied that most pungent expostulation of the Apostle Paul, Romans 2; 17-24, "Behold, thou restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them who are in darkness, an instructer of the foolish, a teacher of babes, who hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou therefore who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.”

It there be any body of men to whom the gracious Redeemer's melancholy description applies, it is to preaching slave-drivers, and to those who sanction the men-stealers with their direct approbation or defence, or smooth prophesying; and their exact fraternal counterparts, the Roman priests, those "unclean spirits like frogs which come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet." Hear the infallible Judge! Matthew 5; 19, 20. "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven."

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To understand the pertinent and precise application of these words of Jesus, who "taught as one having authority;" we must examine some of the principal characteristics of those ancient "hypocrites." "They made the commandment of God of none effect by their tradition, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Matthew 15; 6, 9. “Full well they rejected the commandment of God, that they might keep their own tradition." Mark 7; 9. 'They shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. Matthew 23; 13. "They took away the key of knowledge: they entered not in themselves, and them who were entering in they hindered." Luke 11; 52. "They tithed mint, and anise, and cummin, and rue, and all manner of