5.  And then they are emphatically, and peculiarly, and exclusively, STRANGERS—­strangers in the land which gave them birth.  Whom else do we constrain to remain aliens in the midst of our free institutions?  The Welch, the Swiss, the Irish?  The Jews even?  Alas, it is the negro only, who may not strike his roots into our soil.  Every where we have conspired to treat him as a stranger—­every where he is forced to feel himself a stranger.  In the stage and steamboat, in the parlor and at our tables, in the scenes of business and in the scenes of amusement—­even in the church of God and at the communion table, he is regarded as a stranger.  The intelligent and religious are generally disgusted and horror-struck at the thought of his becoming identified with the citizens of our republic—­so much so, that thousands of them have entered into a conspiracy to send him off “out of sight,” to find a home on a foreign shore!—­And justify themselves by openly alledging, that a “single drop” of his blood, in the veins of any human creature, must make him hateful to his fellow citizens!—­That nothing but banishment from “our coasts,” can redeem him from the scorn and contempt to which his “stranger” blood has reduced him among his own mother’s children!

Who, then, in this land “of milk and honey,” is “hungry and athirst,” but the man from whom the law takes away the last crumb of bread and the smallest drop of water?

Who “naked,” but the man whom the law strips of the last rag of clothing?

Who “sick,” but the man whom the law deprives of the power of procuring medicine or sending for a physician?

Who “in prison,” but the man who, all his life is under the control of merciless masters and cruel keepers?

Who a “stranger,” but the man who is scornfully denied the cheapest courtesies of life—­who is treated as an alien in his native country?

There is one point in this awful description which deserves particular attention.  Those who are doomed to the left hand of the Judge, are not charged with inflicting positive injuries on their helpless, needy, and oppressed brother.  Theirs was what is often called negative character.  What they had done is not described in the indictment.  Their neglect of duty, what they had NOT done, was the ground of their “everlasting punishment.”  The representative of their Judge, they had seen a hungered and they gave him no meat, thirsty and they have him no drink, a stranger and they took him not in, naked and they clothed him not, sick and in prison and they visited him not.  In as much as they did NOT yield to the claims of suffering humanity—­did NOT exert themselves to bless the meanest of the human family, they were driven away in their wickedness.  But what if the indictment had run thus:  I was a hungered and ye snatched away the crust which might have saved me from starvation; I was thirsty and ye dashed to