the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth of his belief that God “was with the heaviest column”; and the most obdurate jobber in human flesh may well glow with apostolic fervor, as, from the height of philosophic contemplation to which this principle lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his Providential mission.  It is true, he is now willing to concede, that a man’s right to himself, being given by God, can only by God be taken away.  “But,” he exultingly exclaims, “it has been taken away by God.  The negro, having always been a slave, must have been so by divine appointment; and I, the mark of obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an humble agent in carrying out the designs of a higher law even than that of the State, of a higher will even than my own.”  This mode of baptizing man’s sin and calling it God’s providence has not altogether lacked the aid of certain Southern clergymen, who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified by them.  Here is Slavery’s abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,—­and over all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the multitudinous miseries and infamies it serenely beholds!

It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such authorized expositors of religion, but one can hardly help insinuating the humble suggestion, that it would be as well, if they must give up the principles of liberty, not to throw Christianity in.  We may be permitted to doubt the theory of Providence which teaches that a man never so much serves God as when he serves the Devil.  Doubtless, Slavery, though opposed to God’s laws, is included in the plan of God’s providence, but, in the long run, the providence most terribly confirms the laws.  The stream of events, having its fountains in iniquity, has its end in retribution.  It is because God’s laws are immutable that God’s providence can be foreseen as well as seen.  The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists in existing, is of little importance in determining its right to exist, or its eventual destiny.  These must be found in an inspection of the principles by which it exists; and from the nature of its principles, we can predict its future history.  The confidence of bad men and the despair of good men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or philanthropists to despond.