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| 662 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. perfect simplicity, ' Why do you keep saying so much about the slaves ? Do you imagine that there is one among your hearers who does not agree with you ? We all know that Slavery is very wrong. "What is the use of harping upon this subject Sunday after Sunday? We all feel about it just as you do.' 'Feel about it just as I do.' Very likely, my friends. It is very possible that you ail feel as. much, and that many of you feel about it more than I do. God knows that my regret always has been not that I feel so much, but that I do not feel more. Would to Heaven that neither you nor I oould eat or sleep for pity, pity for our poor down-trodden brothers and sisters. But the thing to which I implore your attention now, is, not what •we know and feel, but the delusion which we are under, in confounding knowing with doing, in fancying that we are working to abolish Slavery because we know that it is wrong. This is what I would Lave you now to consider, the deception that we practise on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we pass off the knowledge of our duty for the performance of it. These are two very distinct things. If you know what is right, happy are ye if ye do it. Observe, my friends, what it is to which I am now entreating your consideration. It is not the wrongs nor the rights of the oppressed upou which I am now discoursing. It is our own personal exposure to a most serious mistake. It is a danger, which threatens our own souls, to wLick I would that our eyes should be open and on the watch. And here, by the way, let me say that one great reason why I refer as often as I Jo, to that great topic of the day, which, in one shape or another, is continually shaking the land and marking the age in which we live, is not merely the righting of the wronged, but the instruction, the moral enlightenment, the religions edification of our own hearts, which this momentous topic affords. To me this subject involves infinitely more than a mere question of humanity. Its political bearing is the very least and most superficial part of it, scarcely worth noticing iu comparison with its moral and religious relations. Once, deterred by its outside, political aspect, I shunned it as many do still, but the more it has pressed itself on my attention, the more I have considered it—the more and more manifest has it become to me, that it is a Bubject full of light and of guidance, of warning and inspiration for the individual soul. It is the most powerful means of grace and salvation appoiuted in the providence of Heaven, for the present day and generation, more religious than churches and Sabbaths. It is full of sermons. It is a perfect gospel, a whole Bible of mind-enlighteuing, heart-cleansing, soul-saving truth. How much light has it thrown for me on the page of the New Testament! What a profound significance has it disclosed in the precepts and parables of Jesus Christ! How do His words burst out with a new meaning! How does it help us to appreciate His trials and the Godlike spirit with which He bore them !" |