The gentlemen now mentioned took me away with them, and introduced me to Mr. Thomas Phillips.  We conversed at first upon the discoveries made in my journey; but in a little time, understanding that I had been educated as a clergyman, they came upon me with one voice, as if it had been before agreed upon, to deliver a discourse the next day, which was Sunday, on the subject of the Slave-trade.  I was always aware that it was my duty to do all that I could with propriety to serve the cause I had undertaken, and yet I found myself embarrassed at their request.  Foreseeing, as I have before related, that this cause might demand my attention to it for the greatest part of my life, I had given up all thoughts of my profession.  I had hitherto but seldom exercised it, and then only to oblige some friend.  I doubted too, at the first view of the thing, whether the pulpit ought to be made an engine for political purposes, though I could not but consider the Slave-trade as a mass of crimes, and therefore the effort to get rid of it as a Christian duty.  I had an idea too, that sacred matters should not be entered upon without due consideration, nor prosecuted in a hasty, but in a decorous and solemn manner.  I saw besides, that as it was then two o’clock in the afternoon, and this sermon was to be forthcoming the next day, there was not sufficient time to compose it properly.  All these difficulties I suggested to my new friends without any reserve.  But nothing that I could urge would satisfy them.  They would not hear of a refusal, and I was obliged to give my consent, though I was not reconciled to the measure.

When I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given, though I knew nothing of it, that such a discourse would be delivered.  I was surprised also to find a great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit.  There might be forty or fifty of them.  The text that I took, as the best to be found in such a hurry, was the following:  “Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

I took an opportunity of showing from these words, that Moses, in endeavouring to promote among the Children of Israel a tender disposition towards those unfortunate strangers who had come under their dominion, reminded them of their own state when strangers in Egypt, as one of the most forcible arguments which could be used on such an occasion.  For they could not have forgotten that the Egyptians “had made them serve with rigour; that they had made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; and that all the service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.”  The argument therefore of Moses was simply this; “Ye knew well, when ye were strangers in Egypt, the nature of your own feelings.  Were you not made miserable by your debased situation there?  But if so, you must be sensible that the stranger, who has the same heart, or the same feelings with yourselves, must experience similar suffering, if treated in a similar manner.  I charge you then, knowing this, to stand clear of the crime of his oppression.”