We do not ask it. Ourselves weak, irresolute, and worldly,
shall we ask you to do what perhaps we ourselves should not
dare? But we will beseech Him to speak to you, who dared
and endured more than this for your sake, and who can strengthen
you to dare and endure for His. He can raise you above all
temporary and worldly considerations. He can inspire you with
that love to himself which will make you willing to leave father
and mother, and wife and child, yea, to give up life itself, for his
sake. And if ever he brings you to that place where you and
this world take a final farewell of each other, where you make up
your mind solemnly to give all up for his cause, where neither
life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, can move
you from this purpose--then will you know a joy which is above
all other joy, a peace constant and unchanging as the eternal
God from whom it springs.
Dear brethren, is this system to go on for ever in your land?
Can you think these slave-laws anything but an abomination to
a just God? Can you think this internal slave-trade to be any-
thing but an abomination in his sight?
Look, we beseech you, into those awful slave-prisons which
are in your cities. Do the groans and prayers which go up from
those dreary mansions promise well for the prosperity of our
country?
Look, we beseech you, at the mournful march of the slave-
coffles; follow the bloody course of the slave-ships on your coast.
What, suppose you, does the Lamb of God think of all these
things? He whose heart was so tender that he wept, at the
grave of Lazarus, over a sorrow that he was so soon to turn into
joy--what does he think of this constant, heart-breaking, yearly-
repeated anguish? What does he think of Christian wives
forced from their husbands, and husbands from their wives?
What does he think of Christian daughters, whom his Church
first educates, indoctrinates, and baptises, and then leaves to be
sold as merchandise?
Think you such prayers as poor Paul Edmondson's, such
death-bed scenes as Emily Russell's, are witnessed without
emotion by that generous Saviour, who regards what is done to
his meanest servant as done to himself?
Did it never seem to you, O Christian! when you have read
the sufferings of Jesus, that you would gladly have suffered with
him? Does it never seem almost ungenerous to accept eternal
life as the price of such anguish on his part, while you bear no
cross for him? Have you ever wished you could have watched
with him in that bitter conflict at Gethsemane, when even his
chosen slept? Have you ever wished that you could have stood
by him when all forsook him and fled--that you could have
owned when Peter denied--that you could have honoured him
when buffeted and spit upon? Would you think it too much
honour? Could you, like Mary, have followed him to the cross,
and stood a patient sharer of that despised, unpitied agony?
That you cannot do. That hour is over. Christ now is ex-
alted, crowned, glorified; all men speak well of him, rich
Churches rise to him, and costly sacrifice goes up to him. What
chance have you, among the multitude, to prove your love--to
show that you would stand by him discrowned, dishonoured,
tempted, betrayed, and suffering? Can you show it in any way
but by espousing the cause of his suffering poor? Is there a
people among you despised and rejected of men, heavy with
oppression, acquainted with grief, with all the power of wealth
and fashion, of political and worldly influence, arrayed against
their cause? Christian, you can acknowledge Christ in them!
If you turn away indifferent from this cause--“if thou for-
bear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that
be ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not,
doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that
keepeth the soul, doth he not know it? Shall he not render to
every man according to his works?”
In the last judgment will he not say to you, “I have been in
the slave-prison--in the slave-coffle; I have been sold in your
markets; I have toiled for naught in your fields; I have been
smitten on the mouth in your courts of justice; I have been
denied a hearing in my own Church, and ye cared not for it.
Ye went, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.”
And if ye shall answer, “When, Lord?” He shall say unto you,
“Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me.”
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin Page 84
