A further charge in your speech is, that the abolitionists pursue their object “reckless of all consequences, however calamitous they may be;” that they have no horror of a “civil war,” or “a dissolution of the Union;” that theirs is “a bloody road,” and “their purpose is abolition, universal abolition, peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must."

It is true that, the abolitionists pursue their object, undisturbed by apprehensions of consequences; but it is not true, that they pursue it “reckless of consequences.”  We believe that they, who unflinchingly press the claims of God’s truth, deserve to be considered as far less “reckless of consequences,” than they, who, suffering themselves to be thrown into a panic by apprehensions of some mischievous results, local or general, immediate or remote, are guilty of compromising the truth, and substituting corrupt expediency for it.  We believe that the consequences of obeying the truth and following God are good—­only good—­and that too, not only in eternity, but in time also.  We believe, that had the confidently anticipated deluge of blood followed the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, the calamity would have been the consequence, not of abolition, but of resistance to it.  The insanity, which has been known to follow the exhibition of the claims of Christianity, is to be charged on the refusal to fall in with those claims, and not on our holy religion.

But, notwithstanding, we deem it our duty and privilege to confine ourselves to the word of the Lord, and to make that word suffice to prevent all fears of consequences; we, nevertheless, employ additional means to dispel the alarms of those, who insist on walking “by sight;” and, in thus accommodating ourselves to their want of faith, we are justified by the example of Him, who, though he said, “blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed,” nevertheless permitted an unbelieving disciple, both to see and to touch the prints of the nails and the spear.  When dealing with such unbelievers, we do not confine ourselves to the “thus saith the Lord”—­to the Divine command, to “let the oppressed go free and break every yoke”—­to the fact, that God is an abolitionist:  but we also show how contrary to all sound philosophy is the fear, that the slave, on whom have been heaped all imaginable outrages, will, when those outrages are exchanged for justice and mercy, turn and rend his penitent master.  When dealing with such unbelievers, we advert to the fact, that the insurrections at the South have been the work of slaves—­not one of them of persons discharged from slavery:  we show how happy were the fruits of emancipation in St. Domingo:  and that the “horrors of St. Domingo,” by the parading of which so many have been deterred from espousing our righteous cause, were the result of the attempt to re-establish slavery.  When dealing with them, we ask attention to the present peaceful, prosperous, and happy condition of the British