1st.  God does not contradict Himself.  He is “without variableness or shadow of turning.”  He loves his word and has “magnified it above all his name.”  He commands his rational creatures to “search the Scriptures.”  He cannot, therefore, approve of a system which forbids the searching of them, and shuts out their light from the soul; and which, by the confession of your own selves, turns men in this gospel land into heathen.  He has written his commandment against adultery, and He cannot, therefore, approve of a system, which induces this crime, by forbidding marriage.  The following extract from an opinion of the Attorney General of Maryland, shows some of the consequences of this “forbidding to marry.”  “A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed.  A slave is not admonished for incontinence, or punished for fornication or adultery; never prosecuted for bigamy.”  Again, God has written his commandment, that children should honor their parents.  How, then, can He approve of a system, which pours contempt on the relation of parent and child?  Which subjects them to be forcibly separated from each other, and that too, beyond the hope of reunion?—­under which parents are exposed and sold in the market-place along with horses and cattle?—­under which they are stripped and lashed, and made to suffer those innumerable, and some of them, nameless indignities, that tend to generate in their children, who witness them, any feelings, rather than those of respect and honor, for parents thus degraded?  Some of these nameless indignities are alluded to in a letter written to me from a slave state, in March, 1833.  “In this place,” says the writer, “I find a regular and a much frequented slave market, where thousands are yearly sold like cattle to the highest bidder.  It is the opinion of gentlemen here, that not far from five hundred thousand dollars are yearly paid in this place for negroes; and at this moment, I can look from the window of my room and count six droves of from twenty to forty each, sitting in the market place for sale.  This morning I witnessed the sale of twelve slaves, and I could but shudder at the language used and the liberties taken with the females!”

2d.  As a proof, that in the kinds of servitude referred to, God did not invest Abraham, or any other person with that absolute ownership of his fellow-men, which is claimed by Southern slaveholders—­I would remark, that He has made man accountable to Himself; but slavery makes him accountable to, and a mere appendage to his fellow-man.  Slavery substitutes the will of a fallible fellow-man for that infallible rule of action—­the will of God.  The slave, instead of being allowed to make it the great end of his existence to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever, is degraded from his exalted nature, which borders upon angelic dignity, to be, to do, and to suffer what a mere man bids him be, do, and suffer.