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| 660 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. Furness's services were most valuable. After hearing a harrowing recital, whether he would or not, it became the burden of his next Sunday's sermon. Abundant proof of this may be found in his printed discourses. Take the following as an illustration. It ia an extract from a sermon delivered on the 29th of May, 1854, a period when the slave oligarchy was at the height of its power and was supported at the North by the most violent demonstrations of sympathy. The text was, " Feed my Lambs:" " And now brothers, sisters, children, give me your hearts, listen with a will to what I have to say. As heaven is my witness, I would not utter one word save for the dear love of Christ and of God, and the salvation of your own souls. Doea it require any violent effort of the mind to suppose Christ to address each one of us personally the same question that He put to Peter, ' Lovest tfaou me V * * * And at the hearing of His brief command, ' Feed my lambs,' so simple, so direct, so unqualified, are we prompted like the teacher of the law who, when Christ bade him love his neighbor as himself, asked, 'And who ia my neighbor?' and in the parable of the good Samaritan, received an answer that the Samaritans whom he despised, just as we despise the African, was his neighbor, are we prompted in like manner to ask, ' Who are the lambs of Christ?' Who are His lambs? Behold that great multitude, more than three millions of men and feeble women and children, wandering on our soil; no not wandering, but chained down, not allowed to stir a step at their own free will, crushed and hunted with all the power of one of the mightiest nations that the world has yet seen, wielded to keep them down in the depths of the deepest degradation into which human beings can be plunged. These, then that we despise, are our neighbors, the poor, stricken lambs of Christ. To cast one thought towards them, may well cause us to bow down our heads in the very dust with shuine. No wonder that professing to Jove Christ and bis religion, we do not like to hear them spoken of; for so far from feeding the lambs of Christ, we are exciting the whole associated power of this land, to keep them from being fed. ' Feed my lambs.' We might feed them with fraternal sympathy, with hope, with freedom, the imperishable bread of Heaven. We might lead them into green pastures and still waters, into the glorious lil>erty wherewith Christ died to make all men free, the liberty of the children of God. We might secure, to them the exercise of every sacred affection and faculty, wherewith the Creator has endowed them. But we do none of those things. "\Ve suffer this great flock of the Lord Jesus to be treated as chattels, bought and sold, like beasts of burden, hunted and lacerated by dogs and wolves. I say we, we of these Free Northern communities, because it is by our allowance, signified as effectually by silence, as by active co-operation, that mich things are. They could continoe so, scarcely an hour, -were not the whole moral, religious and physical power of the North pledged to their support. Are we not in |