If his “abilities” are small, his task must be easy and his burden light.  Thus the Golden Rule requires mankind mutually to serve each other.  In this service, each is to exert himself—­employ his own powers, lay out his own resources, improve his own opportunities.  A division of labor is the natural result.  One is remarkable for his intellectual endowments and acquisitions; another, for his wealth; and a third, for power and skill in using his muscles.  Such attributes, endlessly varied and diversified, proceed from the basis of a common character, by virtue of which all men and each—­one as truly as another—­are entitled, as a birth-right, to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Each and all, one as well as another, may choose his own modes of contributing his share to the general welfare, in which his own is involved and identified.  Under one great law of mutual dependence and mutual responsibility, all are placed—­the strong as well as the weak, the rich as much as the poor, the learned no less than the unlearned.  All bring their wares, the products of their enterprise, skill and industry, to the same market, where mutual exchanges are freely effected.  The fruits of muscular exertion procure the fruits of mental effort.  John serves Thomas with his hands, and Thomas serves John with his money.  Peter wields the axe for James, and James wields the pen for Peter.  Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, employ their wisdom, courage, and experience, in the service of the community, and the community serve Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, in furnishing them with food and raiment, and making them partakers of the general prosperity.  And all this by mutual understanding and voluntary arrangement.  And all this according to the Golden Rule.

What then becomes of slavery—­a system of arrangements, in which one man treats his fellow, not as another self, but as a thing—­a chattel—­an article of merchandize, which is not to be consulted in any disposition which may be made of it;—­a system which is built on the annihilation of the attributes of our common nature—­in which man doth to others, what he would sooner die than have done to himself?  The Golden Rule and slavery are mutually subversive of each other.  If one stands, the other must fall.  The one strikes at the very root of the other.  The Golden Rule aims at the abolition of THE RELATION ITSELF, in which slavery consists.  It lays its demands upon every thing within the scope of human action.  To “whatever MEN DO,” it extends its authority.  And the relation itself, in which slavery consists, is the work of human hands.  It is what men have done to each other—­contrary to nature and most injurious to the general welfare.  THIS RELATION, therefore, the Golden Rule condemns.  Wherever its authority prevails, this relation must be annihilated.  Mutual service and slavery—­like light and darkness, life and death—­are directly opposed to, and subversive of, each other.  The one the Golden Rule can not endure; the other it requires, honors, and blesses.