that accursed thing which God hates, and man ought to abhor! Man is the noblest of the Creator's works; his mind is an emanation from God, and his soul is the very breath of Heaven. There may be superior beings in other worlds, but by these he is not more surpassed than he himself exceeds in nature, endowments and value, all terrestrial objects; for him they were made, to him they are all surrendered, and their worth and excellence is in exact proportion as they subserve his interest and promote his pleasure. All laws are designed for his protection and comfort, and to divest him of any thing that is truly his, is denounced as injustice by the laws of God and man. Yet slavery,as if in contempt and defiance of Heaven, seizes the prince of creation and binds him in chains, annihilates at once his blessing and his rights, exposes and tortures his body, debases and polutes his mind, and sells the creature with its active powers, faculties and emotions.* In speaking of such crimes, it would be criminal to use gentle language; compared with it common crimes lose their atrocity; for when you take away personal freedom, you deprive the wretch of all but life, and of that it would be very charity to bereave him, since its sweets are gone, and nothing left but the dregs of bitterness! Let not the advocates of this unholy traffic take sanctuary in the acts of legislative bodies; Heaven's high Court of Chancery denies its justice.—You know there are many rights belonging to man independent of all law, and of this nature is personal liberty. Oh, my friends, slavery is the darkest spot in your country's prospect! This sin must be put away, or as a nation we shall be punished. And it will be wise in us to remember, that if nations and states are ever * These remarks are quoted from memory, and are contained in an able discourse on Slavery, by the Rev. J. K. Hall, of Kettering. Not being able to refer to it, the ideas are retained, but the exact composition perhaps in some degree departed from. visited with divine wrath, as collective bodies it must be in the present state. The solemn realities of a judgment day are designed for man in an individual capacity. All human associations will then be dissolved and melted down; every man, amid surround ; ing millions, will be judged apart . The history and the prophecy of sacred writ direct our notice to the overthrow of all the empires and cities of antiquity, and not so much for the purpose of giving a chronicle of the event, as to afford a moral lesson to the world. We are specially informed that sin was the procuring cause of all their ruin! Go to the lands where those cities were situated, and you behold only the angel of desolation, stalking like a spectre along the plain, glancing its eye to Heaven and exclaiming amid the surrounding silence, “ The kingdom and nation that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” When you behold the crumbling fragments of departed greatness, does not every breeze as it whistles through the ruin exclaim, with a sepulchral tone, “ It is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God !” “Be wise, therefore, oh ye children of men; 6 and be instructed, ye rulers !" God's threatenings have all been executed on the seed of Abraham; they are the witnesses of his truth, the sad monuments of his wrath. Jehovah's vengeance has been seen for eighteen centuries on the hills of Judea, and her peaceful tribes are scattered through all lands. Collective bodies are deprived of the last hope of sinning with impunity, when they mark the fulfilment of the threatenings uttered by the Son of God to John against the Asiatic Churches. Those cities are possessed by owls and foxes; the sun of righteousness has set on the scenes of apostolic labor and the crescent of the imposter Mahomet heds a pale disastrous light upon the lands once luminated by the splendor of celestial beams! Oh, ll me, if America deserves not the severest destiny, she take not the warning ? “ Happy is the people hose God is the Lord; who do justice, and love iercy, and walk humbly with their God.” Now let me ask, what man is there in this assembly but feels his obligation to Providence, for ordering the bounds of his habitation in this goodly land? How animating is the prospect which opens on the rising generation! They shall see the meridian of that splendid day, whose dawn we delight to behold, empurp- X ling the horizon. The cause we love shall live when we are dead; it shall be handed down from sire to son; "it shall subdue to itself all that is great, subordinate all that is good, and sit enthroned on the riches of the universe!" We stand upon an eminence and behold a lovely prospect. We see empires and countries and whole continents, that are destined to join our enterprise, encouraged by our successful experiment. Yes! we have laid the corner stone of a stupendous and glorious edifice, a magnificent temple; "its arch shall extend from pole to pole, its choir shall rest on the empire of China, its western window look out on the great South Sea." And all the people, nations, tribes and tongues, attracted by the spangled banner which waves upon its dome, shall take sanctuary within its mighty circumference, and celebrate the Jubilee of the World, -the Emancipation of our Race,-the Praises of Freedom! "Freedom, such as God hath given |