The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word.  But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.  He may not marry; nor may he read the Bible.  Again, he would obey God in the duties of secret and social prayer.  But he may not attend the prayer-meeting—­certainly not that of his choice; and instances are known, where the master has intruded upon the slave’s secret audience with heaven, to teach him by the lash, or some other instrument of torture, that he would allow “no other God before” himself.

Said Joseph Mason, an intelligent colored man, who was born and bred near Richmond, in Virginia, in reply to my question whether he and his fellow-slaves cared about their souls—­“We did not trouble ourselves about our souls; we were our masters’ property and not our own; under their and not our own control; and we believed that our masters were responsible for our souls.”  This unconcern for their spiritual interests grew very naturally out of their relation to their masters; and were the relation ordained of God, the unconcern would, surely, be both philosophical and sinless.

God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power—­of assuming God’s place and relation towards his fellow-men.  Were the master, in every case, a wise and good man—­as wise and good as is consistent with this wicked and heaven-daring assumption on his part—­the condition of the slave would it is true, be far more tolerable, than it now is.  But even then, we should protest as strongly as ever against slavery; for it would still be guilty of its essential wickedness of robbing a man of his right to himself, and of robbing God of His right to him, and of putting these stolen rights into the hand of an erring mortal.  Nay, if angels were constituted slaveholders, our objection to the relation would remain undiminished; since there would still be the same robbery of which we now complain.

But you will say, that I have overlooked the servitude in which the Jews held strangers and foreigners; and that it is on this, more than any other, that you rely for your justification of slavery.  I will say nothing now of this servitude; but before I close this communication, I will give my reasons for believing, that whatever was its nature, even if it were compulsory, it cannot be fairly pleaded in justification of slavery.

After you shall have allowed, as you will allow, that slavery, as it exists, is at war with God, you will be likely to say, that the fault is not in the theory of it; but in the practical departure from that theory; that it is not the system, but the practice under it, which is at war with God.  Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.  But to indulge you, we will look at the system of slavery, as it is presented to us, in the laws of the slave States; and what do we find here?