Are doctors of divinity blind, or are they hypocrites?  I suppose some are the one, and some the other; but I think if they felt the interest in the poor and the lowly, that they ought to feel, they would not be so easily blinded.  A clergyman who goes to the south, for the first time, has usually some feeling, however vague, that slavery is wrong.  The slaveholder suspects this, and plays his game accordingly.  He makes himself as agreeable as possible; talks on theology, and other kindred topics.  The reverend gentleman is asked to invoke a blessing on a table loaded with luxuries.  After dinner he walks round the premises, and sees the beautiful groves and flowering vines, and the comfortable huts of favored household slaves.  The southerner invites him to talk with those slaves.  He asks them if they want to be free, and they say, “O, no, massa.”  This is sufficient to satisfy him.  He comes home to publish a “South Side View of Slavery,” and to complain of the exaggerations of abolitionists.  He assures people that he has been to the south, and seen slavery for himself; that it is a beautiful “patriarchal institution;” that the slaves don’t want their freedom; that they have hallelujah meetings and other religious privileges.

What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? of young girls dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh? of men screwed into cotton gins to die?  The slaveholder showed him none of these things, and the slaves dared not tell of them if he had asked them.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south.  If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.  If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church dismiss him, if she is a white woman; but if she is colored, it does not hinder his continuing to be their good shepherd.

When I was told that Dr. Flint had joined the Episcopal church, I was much surprised.  I supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men; but the worst persecutions I endured from him were after he was a communicant.  The conversation of the doctor, the day after he had been confirmed, certainly gave me no indication that he had “renounced the devil and all his works.”  In answer to some of his usual talk, I reminded him that he had just joined the church.  “Yes, Linda,” said he.  “It was proper for me to do so.  I am getting in years, and my position in society requires it, and it puts an end to all the damned slang.  You would do well to join the church, too, Linda.”

“There are sinners enough in it already,” rejoined I.  “If I could be allowed to live like a Christian, I should be glad.”