But perhaps you will be ready to query, why appeal to women on this subject? We do not make the laws which perpetuate slavery. No legislative power is vested in us; we can do nothing to overthrow the system, even if we wished to do so.  To this I reply, I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken.  You can do much in every way:  four things I will name. 1st.  You can read on this subject. 2d.  You can pray over this subject. 3d.  You can speak on this subject. 4th.  You can act on this subject.  I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for; it is only then we can “pray with the understanding and the spirit also.”

1.  Read then on the subject of slavery.  Search the Scriptures daily, whether the things I have told you are true.  Other books and papers might be a great help to you to this investigation, but they are not necessary, and it is hardly probable that your Committees of Vigilance will allow you to have any other.  The Bible then is the book I want you to read in the spirit of inquiry, and the spirit of prayer.  Even the enemies of Abolitionists, acknowledge that their doctrines are drawn from it.  In the great mob in Boston, last autumn, when the books and papers of the Anti-Slavery Society, were thrown out of the windows of their office, one individual laid hold of the Bible and was about tossing it out to the ground, when another reminded him that it was the Bible he had in his hand.  “O! ’tis all one,” he replied, and out went the sacred volume, along with the rest.  We thank him for the acknowledgment.  Yes, “it is all one,” for our books and papers are mostly commentaries on the Bible, and the Declaration.  Read the Bible then, it contains the words of Jesus, and they are spirit and life.  Judge for yourselves whether he sanctioned such a system of oppression and crime.

2.  Pray over this subject.  When you have entered into your closets, and shut to the doors, then pray to your father, who seeth in secret, that he would open your eyes to see whether slavery is sinful, and if it is, that he would enable you to bear a faithful, open and un-shrinking testimony against it, and to do whatsoever your hands find to do, leaving the consequences entirely to him, who still says to us whenever we try to reason away duty from the fear of consequences, “What is that to thee, follow thou me.”  Pray also for that poor slave, that he may be kept patient and submissive under his hard lot, until God is pleased to open the door of freedom to him without violence or bloodshed.  Pray too for the master that his heart may be softened, and he made willing